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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26300971">Nazgûl, Unbound</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/draylon/pseuds/draylon'>draylon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (Video Games), Middle-earth: Shadow of War (Video Games), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, Warnings for gratuitous and explicitly described mature content apply from the outset.</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 05:54:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>24,727</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26300971</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/draylon/pseuds/draylon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Following his betrayal by the Elf Celebrimbor and uptake of one of the Nine Rings of Power Talion, a former Ranger of Gondor, finds himself in the unenviable position of becoming a fledgling Nazgûl.  A random Uruk Warchief's plan throws a spanner in the works however, and may turn out to stand between the Ranger and his ultimate fate.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ratbag the Coward/Talion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Nazgûl in winter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>He captured the Bright Lord on a day grey with frost at the end of winter, the Uruk Chieftain who’d taken him.</p><p>Catching the Bright Lord was one thing, containing him another altogether.  But, if the former Ranger’s Wraith-enhanced abilities were rooted in magic, through use of the correct kind of magic they could be suppressed - or so the Chieftain’s argument went.  Once stripped of his powers the dead Man could indefinitely be contained. </p><p>The Uruk who claimed to have the necessary knowledge and knowhow, the nuts and bolts of how to do it was a minor Warchief, one freshly returned from a posting on Mordor’s furthest border, out on the Eastern campaigns.   On his return the Warchief brought with him a vision for the Bright Lord’s future; also spells, strange incantations, and equipment.   Above all, he brought a wild-eyed zealot’s plan.</p><p>The Warchief in question was not affiliated to any of the named Orc-tribes or even a Clan, and so he set up his base in no-man’s land, in the disputed border space between two warring Warlord’s territories.  He and a handful of troops started out by occupying a half-ruined waystation deep in hill-country.  It had been built by Orcs during an earlier phase of Mordor’s fortification, centuries ago.  The roof and three out of four of the outer walls were still sound, but the since the premises had been abandoned much of the frontage, and all of the interior portions had fallen into disrepair.  The Warchief and his Orcs from the East embarked on an industrious programme of rebuilding. </p><p>One particular chamber towards the back of the derelict building saw the focus of their efforts.  It was built partly into the black bed-rock of the mountainside and its stone walls, in places, stood three feet thick.         </p><p>The Warchief let it be known that this was to be the Bright Lord’s prison, and the site of his ongoing subjugation.  His imprisonment would serve as both a punishment and a warning for any others who would dare to oppose the Dark Lord Sauron’s will. </p><p>Word spread.  The local Warlords had had years of dealing with the undead Wraith.  Decades of fighting him, being dominated to his will; some of them eventually breaking free of him: in the cloudy-minded interim, they had even joined in his campaigns.  The cycle had gone on and on, but no matter how many times he was ambushed or cut down in battle, the Bright Lord always returned from it.  It seemed as inevitable as he was invincible.  To the last Orc, the Old Guard were sceptical. </p><p>The new Warchief carried on regardless.  Into the foundations and wet mortar of the Bright Lord’s prison chamber he incorporated all manner of arcane ingredients.  A clutch of Ghûl-eggs days from hatching were buried in the walls, facing the cardinal points of the compass: due north, south, east and west.  The hatchlings’ chittering cries from inside their eggs faded and grew silent as the fortifications were built up around them.  The Warchief added binding spells built on an amalgam of Caragor claws, guts and entrails, all burned to cinders in a Fire-drake’s flame.  Cemented into the ceiling and floor went dozens upon dozens of Drake-scales, pulled from the living, fire-breathing beasts.  Added to that was a handful of mystic sigils, painstakingly painted onto a double set of Ologs’ teeth.</p><p>And finally a wax-stoppered witch-bottle, into which the Warchief decanted his a measure of his own blood, piss and excrement, as well as other of his more intimate and germinal secretions  -</p><p>Ratbag really had to throw his arms up in exasperation when he heard that last part.  All through it, the Warchief had made no secret of his preparations.  There had been daily rituals held at the Waystation, involving a cadre of Uruks; hooded, masked, and chanting in unison.  Bloody sacrifices were followed by regular balefires that spewed acrid, oddly-coloured smoke.  An element of gaudy spectacle had been tacked on to the ongoing arrangements and speaking as an Orc who knew, in Ratbag’s opinion this was nothing more than sleight of hand; an advanced case of smoke, mirrors and deception acting as cover for something pretending to be what it wasn’t.  </p><p>Ratbag of all people ought to recognize the tactics: he’d made his own Mordain career out of just this type of gainful misdirection.  Whether masquerading as an Overlord or impersonating a Warchief, he’d taken pains to project a false aura of strength, capability and competence to cover up his personal inadequacies in all of these respects.  Ratbag had form for prevarication and was an experienced dissembler: he knew whereof he spoke.</p><p>For all that these precautions would help to contain the Wraith, they were but secondary trappings, according to the Warchief.  Not just anybody would be able to accomplish what he was planning!  Additional measures or so he said, were also necessary to bind the Nazgûl - and that, to Ratbag’s mind was what confirmed it.  There was no way the Warchief was showing his true hand.</p><p>When the prison-cell was ready the trap was set and sprung accordingly, and the Bright Lord duly trapped.  It was all achieved with a minimum of fuss.   And now the Warchief had him! </p><p>***</p><p>Some of the Warchief’s orders might have been unorthodox but the reasoning behind the others was obvious: the prison chamber in which the Wraith was kept was always to remain brightly lit.  The Warchief had lamps fed with shark-blubber, Caragor-grease and Graug-fat set up and kept burning in the four corners of the room.  This stood to reason: the Wraith, being a creature of darkness shunned light.  He was weakened, and could even be damaged by the heat and bright light of a flame.</p><p>Orcs and Uruks put aside their clannish disputes for the meantime and came to the Waystation in droves to see him.  The long years of the Wraith’s guerrilla war against Sauron’s forces had stretched into decades of campaigning.  Up and down the country, Warlord after Warlord had fallen under the spell of his dominion.  By now there was scarce an Orc in Mordor who wouldn’t have gladly borne witness to something like this.</p><p>It took time for the initial furore to die down.  The Orcish pecking order was such that the wants and wishes of the strongest would always outweigh those of the weak, which meant that a good few weeks had passed by the time the likes of Ratbag, the self-avowed dregs of Mordor, could get so much as a brief look-in.  Not that he’d been sure, given the tenor of his and the Bright Lord’s last meeting, that he’d even <em>wanted</em> to see but in the end curiosity outweighed caution, as for Ratbag it so often did.  By the time he made his way to the Waystation there was still a steady stream of visitors, and repeat visitors to contend with.  Not until the wee small hours was Ratbag able to pay his visit.</p><p>It was an hour or two away from morning, and the lamps in the Bright Lord’s prison were burning still. </p><p>He was called the Bright Lord but in truth he was only one half of that former entity; the earth-bound, Mannish portion from which the Elf Lord Celebrimbor’s Wraith-ghost had long since fled.  He’d been a Ranger named Talion, once.  That was long ago, in the days when Ratbag had first come to know him.  The Man had had other titles since.</p><p><em>Dark Ranger, Gravewalker, Bright Master.  </em>To Orcs and Uruks he’d been <em>Man-flesh</em>, or <em>hoi!  Pinkskin! </em> To other entities yet a<em> deathless, Flesh-haunted thing - </em></p><p>But if he called himself anything now, it was anyone’s guess. </p><p>The Gravewalker was bound near the back of the cell, hugging the ground.  His head was bowed and he was kneeling, thighs spread wide and splayed awkwardly apart.  He had been bent double in a low hogtie, with his upper arms lashed tight to the sides of his body.  Both wrists were tied behind his back. They had been hiked up behind him and secured to a shackle high in the wall by a length of twisted rope.</p><p>He’d been restrained like this ever since the Warchief captured him.  A mortal Man, even an Uruk held captive under these conditions would long since have begun to flag, but the orange eyes in the Dark Ranger’s livid face remained clear and bright.  Startlingly alert.  His eyes when he raised his head were flashing with hatred and malevolence, and a whole-hearted promise of the fury with which he would enact his future vengeance.</p><p>Talion was presumed to be a fledgling Nazgûl and his captors were taking no chances where his Wraith-abilities were concerned: he had been fitted with a gag as a necessary precaution, and when he met Ratbag’s gaze it was with a low growl that reverberated in his throat.  Eldritch cadences that couldn’t possibly have been present thrummed up and down in it; rising and falling notes in a raw, inhuman noise that no mere Man should have been able to make. </p><p>He had also undergone a shocking physical transformation.  Already undead – or rather, ‘<em>banished from death’</em> - by the time Ratbag met him, in the beginning he’d always looked human, at least.  With the severing of his and Celebrimbor’s connection had come awful changes, the inevitable consequence of Talion’s uptake of one of the Nine Nazgûl Rings.  But what <em>was</em> he now?  Part Nazgûl?  Or a Wight? </p><p>Was he a Ring-Wraith? </p><p>Even if he was not yet a Wraith there was no doubt that the Ranger looked every inch the part.  He was white as a corpse, pale as a Barrow-Wight, with stark black lines, a visible network of corruption, running beneath the surface of his skin.  They surrounded in particular his eyes, which were fire-coloured now and <em>glowing</em>; they glowed from within with their own light, like a pair of burning coals.  The Gravewalker’s eerie, glowing eyes looked through and straight past Ratbag, registering and recognising nothing, as if he wasn’t there.  </p><p>They’d not been friends, Ratbag and the Ranger.  Man and Orc had been acquaintances; sometime comrades-in-arms, but they’d never come close to being friends, exactly.  Between the moments of panic, high drama, and near-fatal experiences that were the hallmarks of Talion’s early days in Mordor, the time they’d spent together had been too scant to allow for anything like that.  Ratbag reckoned that he still knew Talion in spite of it because from the very beginning, the Man’s sincerity and warmth had shone through.  His good heart, his honest kindness; in the few, quiet moments they’d spent together the Orc had quickly come to recognize all of it, or so he’d like to think.  And in this new half-feral, snarling, iteration remained next to nothing of Ratbag’s former comrade.  This malice-filled, Man-shaped revenant was little more than a beast pretending to wear the dead Ranger’s skin.</p><p>These changes had been a long time coming.  The Elf-Lord’s insidiously increasing influence had brought about the collapse of Talion’s moral compass, as under his tutelage the Ranger grew inured to greater and greater acts of cruelty and partook in more and more questionable things.  From the start he’d thought nothing of dominating Orcs and Uruks, of bending them to his will, but towards the end of his and Ratbag’s association he’d taken to breaking their minds wide-open too.  It had been a fate worse than death, what he’d inflicted, and done for the express purpose of punishment.  Talion had proved himself no better than the Dark Lord in that respect, and it was the sober realization of what he had become that ultimately led to the parting of his and Ratbag’s ways.  The kind-hearted Ranger he’d once known was gone, lost well before the bodily changes that had been wrought on him.  His soulless, staring eyes, the stark festering traces he bore on his skin – with hindsight, it all seemed so very apt.  What were these alterations, if not a physical manifestation that tracked the steady erosion of the Ranger’s better self and his compassion?  Just like an Orc his form had been warped.  The tragedy was that in Talion’s case he’d been warped by his own callous, thoughtless cruelty, twisted past breaking-point, and all from within.    </p><p>Wasn’t it for the best that this unnatural creature was contained?  Surely it was a dark blessing that he was secure in his imprisonment -  albeit there were signs that the Wraith was kept that way perhaps less by the ‘enchantments’ the Eastern Warchief had made such a show of incorporating into his prison than by a number of other….elements that contributed to his confinement.</p><p>The brightly-polished gag that had been forced into his mouth, for one.  That piece of equipment was secured behind his head by a pair of broad buckled straps, and had a counterpart similarly inserted at the other end of his body.  Together these two items had been the subject of one of the Warchief’s more unusual restrictions: one at a time could be removed, never the other.  In the early days the Wraith had proved himself to be a savage biter; in practice it was the gag that stayed permanently on him.</p><p>The gag had been fashioned from a sphere of dark-coloured, glassy material, impractical as it was unforgiving; the type of surface against which an unwary Man, were he to bite down on it, would easily break his teeth.  But if nothing else it showed attention to detail, that someone had gone to painstaking lengths in selecting it, as it was strikingly similar in appearance to the mineral from which the fabled Elvish seeing-stones were crafted, and that was a not-so-subtle dig at the Bright Lord’s expense if Ratbag ever saw one.  He jumped with fright as the Ranger made a sudden, desperate hissing noise.  So, Talion was still human enough to need to draw his breath, at least.  The Man’s cheeks hollowed and his lips flared around the gag as he struggled to pull in air past the obstruction.  Ratbag stood, counting for a moment.  For every breath the Ranger drew the Orc took in a good half-dozen.    </p><p>He’d heard second hand about the Warchief’s instructions and so he had a good idea what else to expect.  The Ranger’s clothing and the overlapping scales of his strange, spike-plated armour were intact in front.  The situation was different however, at the back.  To see more than he wanted to see of the Ranger’s predicament, Ratbag needed only to step round behind him and take a single searching look.</p><p>The ropes tied to Talion’s wrists extended not just up to the shackle in the wall, but down between his legs, towards the secret portions of his body.  The seat of his breeches had been ripped open and the protective leather panels of armour stripped to the sides, leaving the Ranger’s backside bare and exposed.  A double line of rough cord ran from his wrists and had been pulled tight into the cleft between his buttocks.  And it was secured to – something there.</p><p>The Gravewalker was on his knees with his legs spread so wide because there was something lodged inside him, and the ropes and the bent-double, sprawling pose in which he was tied were keeping it in place.  The ropes had been twined around the exposed part of the object, plugging it firmly into his arse.  They ran on down past the Ranger’s anus, where they were cutting shallow grooves in the sensitive skin of his perineum, and finished looped securely around his penis and scrotum.  For embellishment his captors had added other bits and pieces of equipment there.  Talion had been fitted with was a sturdy-looking metal sheath at the base of his manhood, a size too small for an Uruk but on a Man, an excessively close fit.  There were also wide leather bands wound round the loose skin of his ball-sack, so many that they almost completely enclosed his balls.  The straps had been tied much too tight to allow him to ejaculate properly and yet in spite of it the Ranger’s staff was more than half-way hard.   And he had come – or as much as he was capable of coming – already.  He had spatters of his own spend on him, droplets of semen that had dried onto his semi-erect spear-shaft, and more where it had dribbled down and soaked into the covering over his tightly bound balls.    </p><p>Ratbag could smell fresh traces of Morgul-fly venom.  It was a notorious irritant that at low enough doses could also work as a painfully potent aphrodisiac.  No doubt it had been rubbed into Talion’s genitals beforehand to get him into, and keep him in this unenviable state.  A thin decoction expressed straight from the venom-glands, and diluted into a carrier oil or paste would have been worked under his foreskin and rubbed over all the delicate membranes through which it would be most readily absorbed.  The dosage would also have been increased by having more of the paste smeared onto the gag in his mouth and the plug in his backside before they went into him.  </p><p>It was quite a predicament he was in.  The unfortunate Man could try to straighten his back or to relieve the tension in his rope-bound arms but any effort he made to do so would result in his spear-shaft and packet being forcibly dragged downwards and back, and also cause the object in his anus to change its position, making it shift up and down and change the angle and depth with which it was penetrating him.  </p><p>Secured as he was, it was impossible for Talion to purge himself of the venom’s noxious effects in the normal manner.  A healthy release would have gone a long way to accomplishing that, but for the present it was beyond him.  If he attempted to move it would only serve to further infuriate and inflame his senses, increasing his torment.  It was a wonder, really, that the accumulation of toxins hadn’t long since sent him into a frenzy of pain and delirium, but the Ranger remained conscious of his plight.  Bound but still unbroken, he seemed to simmer with impotent fury, registering nothing other than his intolerable confinement.  There wasn’t a thought for the future or remembrance of the past in the Nazgûl’s implacable, rage-filled gaze.  Straining against the ropes that bound him in minute increments he was animal-like, focused only in the present but no less dangerous for it: he was every bit as lethal as a felled Fire-Drake, trapped in its cage.</p><p> </p><p>TBC</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Nazgûl unbound</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>Ratbag and the Ranger hadn’t been friends.  There was a school of thought that said, perhaps with just cause, that Talion deserved everything that had befallen him.  His comeuppance might well have been long overdue.</p>
<p><em>And yet</em>. </p>
<p>It still made something painful and liquid twist in Ratbag’s gut, to see the Ranger brought low like this. </p>
<p>“Talion,” he murmured.  There was an Uruk guard standing a desultory kind of watch on the far side, by the entrance to room.  The novelty of his, and his captive’s situation had long since faded but there were more guards outside, and so Ratbag spoke from the side of his mouth so that only the Nazgûl would be likely to hear.  “Talion,” he said.  “You with me?”</p>
<p>He tried it again.</p>
<p>Nothing.</p>
<p>The Uruk guard accosted him.  The fellow was bored with his job and was at pains to show it.  “Hoi.  You there,” he told Ratbag.  “No talking.” </p>
<p>The Wraith’s back-of-the-throat growling and his struggling ratcheted up a notch as the guard sauntered breezily into his field of view.</p>
<p>Afterwards Ratbag never could’ve said what would’ve happened next, if at that moment he hadn’t been rumbled.  Two things happened then in very quick succession: </p>
<p>The first of these was that Ratbag was recognized.  The Guard’s jaw jutted as he drew closer.  “Oi!” he cried out, incensed.  “You thieving, <em>globbing</em> little shrak-streak!  You light-fingered sodding <em>blighter</em>!  It’s <em>you</em>.”</p>
<p>He advanced on Ratbag, reaching his hands out to grasp a strangle-hold around the smaller Orc’s throat.  In his anger, the Guard made a basic mistake.  He neglected to keep his distance and stepped his foot past the rough semicircle that had been mapped out in chalk in front of Talion on the floor. </p>
<p>That led to the second thing happening directly.  Restrained as he was, the Wraith’s range of movement was severely restricted.  He couldn’t move much but he was able to move just far enough, and fast enough to half-rear up on his knees and drive his muzzled face in a vicious head-butt, straight into the Uruk Guardsman’s groin.   </p>
<p>The Guardsman went down.  “Owww!  <em>Fuck!</em>”</p>
<p>The effort cost Talion dearly.   As the Uruk collapsed onto his side, both hands clutching his battered privates, the Nazgûl, panting shallowly for breath, slumped as far as he could onto his, falling in the opposite direction.  He hung suspended in part from his wrists, uttering short, pained snorts of discomfort as he tried, and failed, to get his legs under him.</p>
<p>There was a charged moment, here, where there was every chance that they could have come back from this.  The binding spells that had been placed on the Wraith remained intact.  Despite the low-level ruckus he’d caused he was still bound and tethered, still secure as he’d ever been in his prison.   </p>
<p>The whites of Talion’s eyes showed as he twisted his head in Ratbag’s direction.  His flat, inhuman gaze slipped over and right past him.  There was no hint of recognition.  The Wraith was simply assessing the threat he posed, without asking for, or expecting assistance.  </p>
<p>And that, more than anything, was what decided it.  Almost before he’d formulated the thought, Ratbag had his side-dagger in his hand.  A few sawing movements and he’d severed the rope running between Talion’s wrists and the shackle on the wall.  The Man’s arms, stiff and numb from long disuse, flopped to his sides as Ratbag set about cutting the other cords binding him.   </p>
<p>He crouched beside Talion in silence, making quick work of slicing through the ropes and unfastening the various restraints until only the gag remained.  For a split second the Man started wildly in place as Ratbag’s fingertips grazed across the straps and buckles that secured it.  It was the first, and most human reaction Ratbag had seen so far.  He had barely, for instance, so much as turned a hair when the Orc had been engaged in the of necessity, intimate and personal task of removing the <em>other</em> object he had in him.</p>
<p>Ratbag now found himself the focus of a slow, cold sizing up, delivered over the Nazgûl’s shoulder.  Did a worm like Ratbag dare to do it?  Free Talion and unleash the whirlwind?  Ratbag thought he could read something like a challenge to him, there.   </p>
<p>And so he did it.   </p>
<p>As he worked the gag out of Talion’s mouth a sizzle of energy and a most unpleasant sensation leapt like lightning from the polished, glassy sphere.  It shot up through his arm, sending the nerves haywire.  Dark spots clouded  Ratbag’s vision for a moment before, as quickly as it had overtaken him, the side-effects vanished.   </p>
<p>If the Wraith had also been afflicted, he didn’t deign to show it.   There was no response other than a slight tremor that seemed to run across his shoulder-blades, perhaps signifying a release of tension.  That, however, might well have been Ratbag’s imagination.  </p>
<p>“Go on then, get cracking.”  Ratbag told him, because these events ongoing had not taken place in a vacuum, which meant that at that moment there was a squad of Uruk reinforcements literally battering at the door.  The Orc resisted, without doubt wisely, an impulse to deliver the Wraith of a companionable slap on the buttocks to send him on his way.  “They’re all yours,” he repeated.  “Have at ‘em.”</p>
<p>The Nazgûl needed no further encouragement.  He surged up off the floor in a blur of action, moving at a rapid, spectrally-enhanced pace it proved nigh impossible for the Orc’s eyes to follow. </p>
<p>At one stroke the lights went out.  The chamber was plunged into near-total darkness, as Talion with the cold breath of his passing extinguished the night-burning oil lamps from the corners of the room. </p>
<p>Ratbag however was still able to hear the effects of the Wraith’s actions clearly enough.  There came a succession of hard, meaty <em>thunks</em>, the sounds of handful after handful of rapidly-hurled blades biting into flesh and reverberating through bone.  Yells of surprise, then of pained rage from the Uruk party on the threshold were bitten off abruptly, and afterwards the backwash of a freezing draught of unnatural coldness came gusting through the open doorway. </p>
<p>Outside an ominous silence had fallen.  It was broken only by brief clashes of metal on metal, growing further and further away, and accompanied by the faint curses and cut-off cries of distant Orcish troops.  Then, all at once the night was split open by the blinding, bright green flare and ground-shaking tremors of a sizeable explosion. </p>
<p><em>Hithlas in the grog-barrels</em>, if Ratbag was any judge.  He should know.  He’d been with the Ranger, when he first learned about that trick.</p>
<p>The noise and tumult faded quickly and after it there came no further sounds of life, or violence.  The darkness reverted back into a tense and waiting quiet.  </p>
<p>There’d been a medium-sized Uruk encampment round the Waystation, at the time Ratbag had first passed through.  The shrakh had Talion <em>done</em> to them?  Burned the poor blighters, all in their beds?  The Wraith’s response had been disproportionate.  Whatever their fate, it seemed the Nazgûl had had his vengeance.   </p>
<p>And it was Ratbag who’d brought that vengeance down upon them.  The first inklings of doubt went creeping up his throat.  He was appalled now, by the sheer scale of what he’d wrought.  The Orc began blundering his way, night-blind, towards the open doorway, his breath coming short, frightened pants.  As he went Ratbag stumbled into a pile of Uruk corpses.  Moving on hands and knees, he felt his way over and around the grisly obstacle.  The Orcs had been freshly killed but every one of them was frozen solid.  The thick rime of ice on their armour was cold enough to burn and stick to skin. </p>
<p>Slaughtered by ice and by fire; here was more evidence of the Wraith’s infernal magic. </p>
<p>In the small amount of light available, Ratbag could see frosty clouds of his breath condensing in front of him.</p>
<p>He was also beginning to be aware of something else out there in the darkness ahead: twin glowing specks of light, far-off and faint enough at first for the Orc to think that he was imagining things.  He caught himself with a jolt of pure, unbridled fright when, moving as one, the sparks suddenly swivelled towards, then seemed to fix themselves in his direction.  With alarming speed they began to close in on him.  There wasn’t the faintest sound, or catch of breath.  Not a footfall, nor sound of sword or mail on armour accompanied their approach.  In absolute silence Ratbag watched them draw nearer, until a pair of awful, orange eyes that burned like embers were looking down on him. </p>
<p>The Nazgûl towered over him.  It didn’t speak.  Instead a dangerous sound, of warning, rattled in the creature’s throat.  Little that was human remained in it, and the unearthly harmonics that Ratbag had noted earlier were clear to hear.  The sound the Nazgûl made was the mechanical strum of a hand run down the wooden teeth of a comb - or perhaps it was more like the slow, eerie plucking of what had once been a Man’s vocal cords, pulled one by one.  It was a desolate, threatening noise that put Ratbag in mind of winter-starved Wargs, and of coiled, striking snakes. </p>
<p>In abject terror, Ratbag cowered at the Wraith’s feet.  He could smell hoar-frost and ashes and burning, and the reek of the black blood that covered it.  He waited for a long, sickening moment for the Nazgûl to finish him, certain in the knowledge that there would be no reprieve.  It was inevitable that the blow should fall.  When it did Ratbag found himself grabbed round the throat by one of the creature’s iron-gauntleted hands.  With a smooth, inexorable movement it lifted him high into the air.  He kicked frantically, ineffectually, his feet finding no purchase at all on the smooth metal plates of the Nazgûl’s armour as it brought him up and held him fixed on a level with its dreadful face.  Ratbag had to squeeze his eyes shut against the terrible, soulless glare of its eyes as he was examined, minutely.</p>
<p>He couldn’t resist.  For a long moment, before he lost consciousness, the Orc knew that it was all over for him. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>TBC</p>
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Dead City</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>When Ratbag next opened his eyes, the cold and dark of the Waystation were gone. </p><p>Ratbag was a tenacious creature; he’d quickly had to learn how to be.  What he lacked in stature, he had to make up for with cunning; that and his native, sinewy strength.  Set alongside the broad, brawny Uruks of Mordor his looks had always been dangerously effete, not to say unacceptably exotic.  With his rounded, stooped shoulders and woeful lack of bulk, there could well have been a touch of Mountain Goblin in his make-up.  Or perhaps something gone wrong with the spawning-water in his vat, with too much, or too little of something filtered into the mix. </p><p>The Orc woke with a sharp yelp of terror and to the memory of iron-gloved fingers crushing the life from his throat.  He was alone in a dark, lofty hall of stone.  Some sixth sense, whether acquired from supposed Mountain-dwelling ancestors or through some other means, immediately told him that he was underground.  The Nazgûl who’d had him was nowhere to be seen but Ratbag had a severe – wobble – on his first moments of waking, to find himself if not buried alive, then unquestionably interred.  In a <em>crypt</em>.  The air was cool and still, and in it he could feel the oppressive weight of centuries.   </p><p>Orcs were creatures whose senses were attuned to magic; through use of a rudimentary kind of mind-magic they were forever enslaved and held in thrall to the Dark Lord Sauron’s will.  Because of it, whether through oversight, or by their Master’s dark design, they were able to recognize magic in its other forms, too.  And woven in layer upon seamless layer, all through this catacomb was hard-edged, lasting magic.  Elven-wrought enchantments ran through the stones of the walls and the floor; even the air was filled and preserved by magic of a type that was by its nature, inherently hostile to all of Ratbag’s kind.  He could feel it as a sense of being intensely scrutinized; a helpless feeling of having unseen eyes like needles pricking at him all over the surface of his skin.  </p><p>Worked-stone walls rose to shadowy heights around him.  Though much of the tomb was closed away from outside light and fresh air, a blue-tinged radiance emanated from its walls, faintly illuminating the vaulted chamber within.  But what <em>was</em> this place?  Had the Nazgûl brought Ratbag to its lair?  And if so, for what purpose?  What fate did the dread creature have in store for him?      </p><p>The answer to most, if not all of these questions undoubtedly was: <em>nothing good</em>.  With that thought in mind Ratbag took to his heels, keeping to the shadows as much as he could. </p><p>He fled past bone-filled crypts; great stone half-lidded coffins in which the remains of the dead had been stored, and down long rubble-filled aisles lined on either side with gigantic, carven statues that stood in everlasting tribute to the lost days of Gondor’s glorious past.  Or rather, to its overblown and vainglorious past, as these stone-cast images, if Ratbag was any judge, showed four, even five times as large as life the fallen heroes of Númenor.   It was easy for him to recognize the provenance of these relicts, because Ratbag had seen the artefacts of Númenor before. </p><p>**</p><p>It was back in the early days of Ratbag and the Ranger’s association.  That evening they’d pitched camp a little way off the old road they’d been following across Mordor.  The Road had been built by the Men of the West, back in the day, or so Talion said.  According to him these people had been unsurpassed stonemasons, and architects, and it was true that in many places there could still be seen the remains of the smooth, meticulously worked paving-stones with which it had been cobbled.  In common with the hidden nook in which Ratbag and the Ranger had set up their nightly bivouac the old road was choked with thorny-stemmed vines, and strewn with broken-down pieces of masonry and rubble. </p><p>Hidden beneath a tangled brake of wild woodbine and briar towards the far side of their camp, Ratbag discovered a long, broad object, made up of regular surfaces of chiselled stone.  Motivated by no more than idle curiosity, he stripped more of the vegetation away from it, eventually uncovering the large statue of a Man, lying somewhat on its front and its side.   For aeons this stony figure had stood guard over the road.  One hand was resting on the hilt of his sword and the other imperiously outstretched.  That arm was snapped off around the region of the elbow now, having presumably been damaged in the statue’s fall.   </p><p>Orc and Ranger crouched down and peered at it.  The surfaces that had lain uppermost were cracked and weather-pitted, but the details sheltered underneath were still clear to see.</p><p>“It’s of a Númenórean,” the Ranger explained, pointing out the distinctive, wing-shaped helm the statue wore.  “He would’ve been a nobleman, or a famous military leader.  Though I suppose those two things mean much the same wherever the Númenóreans are concerned.  They were the Men of Westernesse, who came over the sea and were the original founders of Gondor.”</p><p>Ratbag had been pacing out the length of the stone figure. “What’s this geezer supposed to be, twice the size and half as ugly, or something?” he scoffed.  He paced out its size in Uruk foot-lengths again for Talion to see.  “Look how they’ve gone and got the scale just a little bit to cock.”</p><p>“I think,” the Ranger said, frowning, “that that’s probably deliberate.”</p><p>“Everything’s bigger in Gondor, is that it?”</p><p>Talion sat back on his heels.  “I mean that the Númenóreans <em>were</em> giants among Men.  Literally.  That statue will have been done from life.  A typical Númenórean would have stood about as much taller than me as this - “breaking off, he and indicated a distance about a double hand-span above his head - “ and it’s said that those fortunate enough to be descended from them enjoy the benefits of a greatly extended lifespan too.  These days of course that would apply only to the select few – Lords and Ladies from the most high-born, and most noble lineages of Gondor.”</p><p>Ratbag’s ears swivelled in the Ranger’s direction as he slowly digested this information.  The way he was talking….but then the other Orcs were all in the habit of using Talion’s presumed heritage to taunt him, calling him ‘<em>Filthy</em> <em>Tark Pinkskin,</em>’ and that.  And for this reason naturally, Ratbag had always assumed that….</p><p>“Talion?  Are you saying you’re <em>not</em> a high born Man of Gondor yourself, then?”</p><p>His companion grimaced.  “Far from it.  I grew up in a village in the foothills of the Misty Mountains. There weren’t many options, where I came from.  The choice was between the life of a poor tenant farmer, or becoming a cattle-thief.”</p><p>“So that’s why you went to Gondor,” Ratbag nodded, comprehending.  “You went there to seek your fortune.”</p><p>The Ranger, for once, seemed to be in a rare talkative mood.  Instead of stalking off in high dudgeon, or cutting Ratbag off short with an ill-humoured retort he simply stretched his legs and sat, relaxing by the fire.  “It was something like that,” he sighed.  </p><p>In those days Ratbag had hung on every single one of Talion’s infrequent words.  It was embarrassing for him now to think of how pathetically keen he had been to try to get to know him.  But from the first moment Ratbag had seen him, and for a long time afterwards, Talion had – well.  Even after the fact there was no point trying to get away from it.  In looks, in actions, in manner: in every respect the handsome Ranger had dazzled him.</p><p>“Did you go there as a sell-sword?” Ratbag asked, in a blatant attempt to keep the other Man talking.  “Or did you reckon yourself to be a warrior, even back in the day?”</p><p>Talion’s face twisted.  “No, not at all.  When I was – young, I wanted to learn to be a carpenter.  Perhaps it was naïve, but I’ve always liked working with my hands.  I knew better than to try to aim too high but I  thought, in time, that I could set up as a wheel-wright - or a cooper.  But in Minas Tirith they called me a heathen from the Wilderlands.  Said I was too stupid to learn a craftsman’s trade.” </p><p>“What did you do?”</p><p>“I found a place for myself there eventually.  And as long as I was set simple, unskilled tasks I was told there would always be room for my ‘brute, Wilderlander’s strength’.  It wasn’t all that I’d hoped for but,” and here he flashed Ratbag one of his rare, self-depreciating smiles, “at least I was still able to work with my hands.”    </p><p>Ratbag, for a moment found himself too full of vicarious resentment on the Ranger’s behalf to be able speak.  For a Man of Talion’s calibre – a true nonpareil! - to be insulted and be told that he was ‘stupid’ and ‘brutish’ by those – those superior, full-of-themselves Gondorian <em>bastards</em>!</p><p>He spat, eloquently, at the recumbent statue’s feet.  “That Gondorian shrakh!  Or ‘high-born Númenórean lineage’ shrakh if that’s what you want to call it.  Whichever.  They’d <em>no right</em> to do that to you, Ranger.”</p><p>Talion’s tone when he answered, incredibly, was mild.  “It turned out for the best,” he said.  “Really, it’s all water under the bridge.”</p><p>**</p><p>But what, Ratbag thought to himself, if he <em>had</em> been able to stay in the White City and be taught those craftsman’s skills?  Talion would have had people to vouch for him, then.  A mentor, or fellow Guildsmen, perhaps.  Wouldn’t they have stood up and protected him from exile to the Black Gate?   That exile was what had led to his encounter with the Elf-lord Celebrimbor, and ultimately to all that had befallen him since.  With a shudder the Orc remembered the fell ruin of a creature he’d encountered at the Waystation.  An undead Man turned deathless; now undying and fading into a shade’s miserable existence of endless, ongoing torment, forever ensnared and trapped by the clutches of that thrice-accursed Nazgûl Ring -</p><p>In the vaulted halls, the statues of long-dead Númenóreans waited on in darkness as they always had, standing tall, proud, merciless - and also absurdly overblown; memorials to a vanished race who in death as in life had cast themselves as a warrior-masters; overlords in their halls of cold stone.  </p><p>Ratbag spat into the rubble at the nearest one’s feet.  There was no real anger in it.  More than anything he was heart-sick at the Dark Ranger’s plight.</p><p>If nothing else however, his recognition of the distinctive architectural stylings of Númenor had settled it.  Ratbag knew there was only one place in Mordor he could be: he was in the catacombs of the Dead City, Minas Ithil as the Gondorians had named the place, when in its heyday it shone with the reflected glory of the Moon - or rather Minas Morgul, as  it was now known.  The Tower of Sorcery.  Lair of the Witch-King. </p><p>He’d heard stories about this dreadful, haunted place.  All of Mordor knew of it.  Minas Ithil had been besieged, taken from the Gondorians and overrun by Orcs.  A contingent of Orcs occupied it yet this was no normal Orcish city, for the Nine Nazgûl were here.  Under their influence it had become the focal point, an epicentre from which dark witchcraft and unnatural enchantments spread.  The very daylight – never particularly hale or bright in Morgul Vale - shunned its borders.  This was the home of dead sorcerers, ghosts and revenants.</p><p>And Wraiths. </p><p>Later, Ratbag would swear he felt the creature’s presence, just a little before he was able to detect it through any of his everyday senses.  For a second or two there before the Nazgûl appeared, in that vast, eerie vault he knew beyond doubt that he was no longer alone.</p><p>The creature arrived in deathly silence. With nothing to herald it but a flare of flickering, pale green light it materialized out of thin air, at the other end of the vault.  Through Celebrimbor’s influence Talion had been able at times to transport himself through solid walls and over great distances with a burst of light in similar fashion; an ability that in his current state he seemed to have retained.  Though the blaze of the Wraith’s coming quickly faded, in the gloom of the crypt it burned bright enough to set afterimages of the beast’s devilish shape jumping on the Orc’s retinas.  Ratbag rubbed at his eyes, trying to scrub away the disorienting blur.  Something seemed dreadfully wrong with the shape of the creature’s head…</p><p>The Nazgûl was still clothed head to foot in that covering of strange, black-coated armour.  This time he was hooded and heavily masked, with a rough, spiked contrivance made of dark metal plates that completely covered his face.  Little was left visible of the Man – if there was still a Man – within.  Tilting his head for a moment, Ratbag realized that the Wraith’s troubling silhouette was due in part to a crudely-worked headpiece that rose up from the sides of the mask at the temples, giving the illusion of sharp, triple-bladed horns.  As for the eye-slits, they were practically non-existent.  Quite possibly this Nazgûl was so far-gone that it was no longer was able to see in a conventional sense, the fate that befell all of the Ring-Wraiths eventually.  The Nazgûl feared, and could be banished by light.  After long enough a time spent walking in the Wraith-word in darkness, the sense of sight was lost to them.</p><p>But last night at the Waystation this Wraith, or Nazgûl - or whatever variety of eldritch abomination it was - had looked straight at Ratbag.  It had looked at, and then through him, instantly dismissing him perhaps, but there was no doubt that it had <em>seen</em> him.  It was still human enough to make use of its sight, and have to draw breath.</p><p>And, so far at least, it had spared him.   </p><p>Ratbag’s mind rebelled from the thought, and its implications, but try as he might, it wouldn’t let go of him: to what extent had the Ranger fallen?</p><p>Was Talion still in there somewhere, buried grave-deep, behind that icy mask of a face, behind that burning stare?  </p><p>He stamped down on the sudden mad impulse to try and find out.  Every other instinct he possessed was clamouring at Ratbag to flee.  Having scraped through one near-miss with the Nazgûl already, how much further, really, could he continue to push his paper-thin luck?   By this point he had regained enough of his bearings to have half a dozen possible escape routes marked out – the Orc was a cautious, cowardly creature; he could well have had more than that.  He set out on one of these, taking the path that would allow him to find his way most easily and without detection.  His passage was swift and near-silent.  Having skirted his way round a final pile of boulders from a cave-in high in the roof, the way ahead was clear.  Daylight, and the way out were within his grasp.  Ratbag could have left this place then and there, and saved himself.</p><p>But right on the threshold he paused, fatefully.  The Orc turned to take one last look over his shoulder.</p><p>The vastness of the Númenórean vault lay behind him, limned all about in the unearthly blue radiance that shone down from its walls.  Posed vaguely in front of the stone-carved sarcophagus on which Ratbag had awakened, a single black-clad figure stood.  The Nazgûl, half-shadowed in darkness, waited at the far end of the crypt. </p><p>But what of those Elves and Men who once had called themselves Talion’s comrades?  How could they all have so easily discounted - discarded him, leaving him to face such a terrible fate?  For he was as he had been as a young Man in Gondor.  Without allies.  Abandoned, betrayed, forsaken: utterly, and unutterably alone.   </p><p>Ratbag had turned back and was retracing his steps before he knew it, his feet moving almost of their own accord.  No-one was willing to stand with Talion?   Well, Ratbag would see about that!  He picked up his pace, half-afraid the Nazgûl would enact another of its abrupt vanishing tricks; half-afraid at the same time, that it wouldn’t.  He had no further thought for his own safety, knowing in his heart that it would ever be thus for him, whenever the Ranger was concerned. </p><p>He could try to ignore it as he had done, for years but it had been this way from the first moment he’d met him.   Ratbag would forever be drawn to the Man, no more than a handful of iron scraps to Talion’s impossible lodestone. </p><p> </p><p>TBC</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Aftermath of venom</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>Ratbag’s thoughts were full of Talion, as the Ranger had once been.   It scarcely occurred to him that the creature he was dealing with in the vault was no longer the same person or, strictly speaking, even a Man; not until he was almost in easy hailing distance of the thing.</p>
<p>The Nazgûl hadn’t moved.  Assuming he was able to see out through the hideous mask that covered his face, he was staring down at the plinth on which he had placed Ratbag, where the Orc had woken previously.  </p>
<p>With an almighty clank of armour meeting stone, the Wraith stumbled onto one knee.  He remained where he’d fallen, with his back bowed and his head hanging.  The creature’s chest and shoulders were heaving up and down with the sheer effort of breathing.  It put Ratbag in mind of an Olog from the Fight-Pits, broken-winded after one too many rounds of combat in the ring. </p>
<p>But what was wrong with him?  More than anything he looked – sick.  As if he was injured, or ailing.</p>
<p>Was it even possible for the Nazgûl to fall ill? </p>
<p>Squaring his shoulders, Ratbag stepped out of the shadows.  He called to Talion, using the Ranger’s name, but couldn’t have said whether the Wraith heard him.  He gave no answer but that same ghoulish death-rattle, sounding low in his throat. </p>
<p>His sight would be lost to him, eventually.  Now had the unfortunate shrakhin’ bastard’s voice been taken from him too?</p>
<p><em>Morgul-fly venom</em>, Ratbag realized, with a sinking feeling.  That was one thing that could hurt a Nazgûl  - he’d seen as much for himself at the Waystation, the previous night.  The fly-stings were a horror and a torment, that seemed to reserve the worst of their effects for the native denizens of Mordor.   The  brashest, bravest Ologs and Uruks would run in terror even at the prospect of a Morgul-fly nest near them being disturbed and an angry swarm descending.  And yet, when he was only an undead Man, the same toxins had had no effect on Talion.  After the Uruks at the Waystation had forced the smallest dose into the Nazgûl revenant’s mouth and put it in – other places, well.  Ratbag had seen what it had done to him. </p>
<p>So his fate had been sealed.  Talion truly was a creature of darkness now, like Ratbag; just like the rest of them.   He’d lingered too long in Mordor and gone native in the most hideous manner. </p>
<p>Even at a distance from the Wraith, in the cool of the vault Ratbag could feel wave after wave of the fever-heat that was rolling off him.  He was in a bad way - reacting to the poison as an Orc would, and he was in much worse of a state than he had been the night before.  Morgul-fly venom wasn’t the only substance the Waystation Uruks had been dosing the Ranger with; whatever else they’d given him could have worked to partly counter or suppress the toxin - or perhaps the Nazgûl were more susceptible to its effects.  It would be burning through his blood and fogging his mind, painfully heightening all of his senses.  If left untreated, delirium would follow.  Then a quick death - if he was lucky.</p>
<p>What Talion needed….Ratbag knew he needed to get the rest of the venom out of his system.  With a sting or a fly-bite the simplest solution would be to use the point of a knife to nick the entrance-wound open, then strew the exposed surfaces with salt.  This painful but effective treatment would quickly draw out and neutralize the venom.  But that wouldn’t work in Talion’s case, not with the way the toxins had been administered, through the thin skin of his mouth and his privates.  From there it would have pooled and concentrated in the lower portions of his body, in his gonads.  Down in his balls.  The Orc knew of only one way that filth was coming out. </p>
<p>Was the reason the Nazgûl had brought Ratbag here?  To assist him with – that?</p>
<p>Why else?  The idea did make a morbid kind of sense. </p>
<p>Because Ratbag, in his way, was uniquely placed to help him.  In the old days he’d frequently had to resort to selling himself.  He’d peddled his arse often, and in exchange for all kinds of things: shelter, protection, for food….the idea made him quail a bit, but what was this but more of the same? </p>
<p>All in a day’s work, for an Orc like Ratbag.  Task in hand, to make a Ring-Wraith come. </p>
<p>“S’all right Talion,” he muttered, for all the good it would do.  “Ratbag’s here.  He knows what you need, Ranger.  You’ll be all right.  Ratbag’s gonna help.”</p>
<p>He tried his best to be business-like about it, hunkering down beside the Nazgûl where it was still kneeling at the foot of the altar and – taking care to make no sudden movements - reaching his hand between the creature’s legs.  Shrakh alone knew how he could begin to get the ghastly plates of its armour loose.  But it caught Ratbag by the wrist in a fixed and immovable grip, and kept his hand away from its body.  The strength in it belied how much the Wraith’s own hand shook.</p>
<p>So there were to be no shortcuts.  <em>Right</em>.  Back to basics, in that case.</p>
<p>Breeches down, backside out.  Ratbag braced himself on his elbows on the stone bier and, with a feeling of grim resignation, reached round to prepare himself.  <em>Shrakh’s sake</em>.  If the Wraith really wanted to go at him, he was in danger of being cut to ribbons on all of that sharp-edged metal plate.</p>
<p>But he wasn’t cut to ribbons.  The first time, the second time, he had to lead Talion by the nose, more or less guiding the Wraith into position.  The Nazgûl was weakened and couldn’t carry his own weight.  Ratbag had to resort to propping him up against the altar; even then, the creature was absurdly hesitant to engage with him.   Had there ever been such a thing as a shy Nazgûl?  Given the kind of Man Talion had been, Ratbag supposed he should’ve expected nothing less.  And when at last the Orc coaxed him into broaching his body, he did it….timidly.  A few shallow, jerky thrusts and it was over.  To Ratbag’s surprise the Nazgûl withdrew well before he ejaculated, turning away instead and spattering out a messy finish on the floor.  Afterwards one of his metal and mail gloved hands went onto Ratbag’s shoulder, not crushing him in a grip of violence but rather – resolutely holding him back.  Keeping him out of harm’s way, perhaps.  The Orc caught only a glimpse before the Nazgûl trampled his emissions into the ground beneath his boot. </p>
<p>Neither the smell, nor the colour of the creature’s release were normal.  The stuff also seemed to be glowing in the dark, a bit.   </p>
<p>Ratbag thanked his lucky stars for small mercies.  He was heartily glad not to have gotten any of those questionable fluids on him.</p>
<p>That was how it was through their first, and second couplings.  They weren’t by any means what Ratbag had been expecting.</p>
<p>He couldn’t deny that he’d always hoped for something like this to happen between them.  It was just that when he’d pictured himself and the Ranger together – to the extent that Ratbag allowed himself to imagine such a thing -  this hadn’t been it, exactly.</p>
<p>In his dreams Talion had always been strong.  Forceful.  Commanding, if need be.</p>
<p>The Ranger’s large, warm hands would take an iron grip on Ratbag’s hips, grasping tight enough to bruise fingerprints into his skin.  He’d position Ratbag so he could take him at his convenience, bending and posing and roughly opening him.  The Orc would’ve come at once.  He knew he wouldn’t be able to help it, spurting and dribbling shamefully all over himself the instant Talion touched him.  Just as well, as that was all he was going to get by way of lubrication; a thick fingerful of his own spend pushed up his back passage, before the Ranger was shoving his way into his body. </p>
<p>He’d thrust into Ratbag at his own pace at first, cleaning his hand off on the Orc’s flank, or in his hair; maybe giving him a warning smack or two on the buttocks to tell him not to dare to make a mess of himself like that again.  Talion might enjoy the way it felt when poor Ratbag jerked and jumped with Talion’s cock inside him. </p>
<p>Ratbag hoped it wouldn’t make him want to keep hitting him.</p>
<p>“Now,” Talion would say, as he buckled down to deliver Ratbag of a marathon bout of merciless, forceful fucking, “you’ll lie there and take what you’re given, you revolting creature -”  </p>
<p>And what could Ratbag do but lie still for him and take it?  Yes, he supposed he’d imagined there could be shame and sometimes punishment.  Talion was a Man after all, and Ratbag an Orc.  He wasn’t completely starry-eyed about the realities of his and the Ranger’s situation.  But, running alongside of it, had also been the assumption that Talion would lift him up to almost unendurable heights of pleasure.  He’d always imagined that being with him would be….along the lines of that. </p>
<p>What he hadn’t anticipated was Talion himself being in pain, halfway out of his senses with it, and as for the other half, not far off from being dead.</p>
<p>So much for first impressions.  The third time, however, was different. </p>
<p>In spite of the Nazgûl’s oddly conscientious efforts to spare Ratbag the venom’s second-hand effects, it seemed something - some component of it – must have succeeded in bleeding through.  As he waited, in the glimmering dark of the vault, the Orc couldn’t help but notice that he was undergoing something out of his everyday experience, albeit perhaps at one remove.     </p>
<p>Colours looked – different.  The glowing blue light from the walls of the crypt that had once seemed so hard-edged and hostile had taken on a hazier, more welcoming hue.  Ratbag grinned foolishly out into the dark.  As he smiled he realized he couldn’t quite feel his lips - yet in other portions of his body, his sense of touch seemed heightened. </p>
<p>A lazy warmth was pooling in Ratbag’s belly.  Sparks of pleasurable sensation thrilled through him, coursing through the nerve endings low down in his body.  He was becoming aroused.  The slightest touch of friction felt delightful; the brush of cool air against his face, the rub of clothes against his over-sensitized skin -</p>
<p>He must’ve made some kind of noise, or otherwise attracted the Wraith’s attention, because before he knew it the Nazgûl was looming over him.  It lifted Ratbag - now limp and unresisting, to his feet and crowded him in its arms, supporting the Orc in an unyielding armour-clad mockery of an embrace.  As before, at the Waystation, Ratbag found himself the subject of an intense, intent inspection – one that quickly turned physical.  Hunching over him, the Wraith thrust the cold metal surface of its mask into the crook of Ratbag’s neck, where it snagged on the coarse strands of his beard and pinched his skin.  And it took its time there, examining him first on one side then the other, remaining so close to Ratbag all through it that he could hear the hoarse, rattling sniffs of its breath sounding loud beside his ear.  Belatedly he realized that the creature wasn’t just breathing loudly at him.  It was taking note of his scent – more than that; it was positively drinking it in.  Perhaps the Nazgûl would be able to sense his arousal.  If it could, perhaps it would like that.  If there was anything left of the Ranger in there, would Talion take pleasure in it too?  The thought sent a powerful spike of desire coursing through him.   </p>
<p>Ratbag ought to have been terrified - but he wasn’t.  He scarcely knew what he was doing as he took the creature by the wrist.  He was too addled with lust to be surprised that it tolerated the contact.  It didn’t resist as he led it towards the Elvish altar. </p>
<p>As Ratbag took up his place at the carved slab of stone, the Nazgûl bent him over on top of it, in the place it had taken him before.  His gauntleted hands shoved Ratbag forwards on his face then moved lower and parted his legs wide.  He prised the Orc’s arse-cheeks apart and held him like that, keeping him splayed almost painfully open.  Ratbag’s most private places were bare and unprotected, leaving him exposed for the Nazgûl’s pleasure. </p>
<p>It was humiliating.  Ratbag was hiked up on tip-toe, backside high in the air, with the most sensitive parts of his body spread out on view.  He was certain he could feel the heat of the Wraith’s fiery gaze as it took in every last, mortifying detail.  At the same time he couldn’t deny that he was also achingly aroused.  Between his legs his stick was standing up stiff and proud, and was as hard as it had ever been.  The Orc….wasn’t sure how he felt about any of this.</p>
<p>Talion knelt down behind him.  He’d taken the mask off - or at least partially off.  The tip of his nose nudged at Ratbag’s entrance.  The Orc couldn’t help but shout out from the sensation, and in surprise, as the Nazgûl’s long, clever tongue curled round his balls.  One by one they were sucked into the cool of the creature’s mouth.</p>
<p>Yes, Talion’s skin was cold to the touch.  Ratbag had noted as much when he’d been freeing him at the Waystation, but at the time it had only been a post-script; one more confounding detail in what was already a nightmarish situation.  But it was true: now that the worst of the fever-heat had left him the Nazgûl ran at room-temperature, at best.</p>
<p>For a moment the Wraith buried his face in Ratbag’s backside.  The cleft of his body, then his arsehole were fervently licked; licked up, down, and all around.  A bolt of pure pleasure jolted up the Orc’s spine as the Nazgûl pressed his tongue inside.  He played with Ratbag like that, tonguing his backside, penetrating him with it, bathing him inside and out until the Orc was soaked in indecent slippery wetness, until he was gasping for breath and bucking his hips, desperate for a firmer, stronger, harder, sensation.</p>
<p>Shrakh in the sky!  <em>How</em> had Talion learned to do that?</p>
<p>Like as not it would have been during his recent captivity Ratbag supposed, and the thought made his heart feel heavy in his chest.  Talion as a Man had been straitlaced, upstanding; against the odds he’d remained, after all the years he’d spent in Mordor, even a little naïve.  On one occasion Ratbag had happened upon him unexpectedly by the sandy bank of a river, while he was washing himself.   He had already been waist-deep in the water, and there’d been little or nothing to see.  He’d still blushed head to foot as he hurried to cover himself, and afterwards, he’d not been able to look Ratbag in the eye for the longest time. </p>
<p>There’d been a wife, the Orc thought, and above all else he knew that Talion was a faithful sort.  It went without saying that he would’ve kept faithful to his mate.  Was it possible, then, that he’d never been with anyone else?  Despite the Man’s courage and competence in battle, when other sorts of physical contact were concerned he’d always had about him an odd sort of air of reserve – or inexperience, and that could be one explanation for it.  The kind of back-door play he was currently engaging in – well it counted as being part of a specialist skillset, even among Orcs.  Whatever his past experience, before his encounter with the Uruks at the Waystation, Ratbag doubted that a Man like Talion would ever have been toyed with in those parts of his body before.  </p>
<p>There was no doubt he’d shed all of his inhibitions now, because with that he mounted Ratbag.  The Orc couldn’t think of a better word for it.  <em>Shrakh’s sake</em>, but he was getting good at this.  This time the Nazgûl knew Ratbag was ready.  ‘Course he was; he’d <em>made</em> Ratbag ready, and with one smooth push of his hips he sheathed the length of his spear-shaft all the way into him.  Ratbag couldn’t help but cry out when he did it.  The Nazgûl had made him very wet and loose but there was a lot of Wraith to take, and a thread of pain was intermixed with his pleasure.  The Orc had barely a moment of respite before the Nazgûl began taking him in earnest, shoving him back and forth on the altar with the power of its thrusts.  This time it subjected him to a feral, animalistic, claiming.  Their bodies were joined but there was no other contact.  They might as well have been a pair of rutting beasts.  With his hands gripping tight to the stone, one on either side of Ratbag’s body, the Nazgûl fucked Ratbag on the surface of the altar, into and then past the limits of a hard, shuddering orgasm.  When he was sure he was done, this time, with a last, shivering exhale, the Wraith spent himself inside him. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>TBC</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Edge of darkness</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>The Nazgûl hadn’t been able to place him at first.   When …. the scrawny Orc first arrived at the Waystation it had been sunk far too deep in its own suffering to have any hope of recognizing him.  </p>
<p>Neither fully Man nor Ring-Wraith, the Nazgûl had been cursed with a twilit half-existence.  For years the only companion it had known in its dreadful isolation was the voice of Sauron.  Through Isildur’s Ring the Dark Lord spoke to the Nazgûl as a constant clamouring, a rising tide of filth and foulness that seeped into the Wraith’s thoughts, tempting and taunting, polluting everything. </p>
<p>For years the voice of the Ring had sought to break Talion’s mind and his will, working systematically to strip away his sense of self.  At times it seemed no louder than a whisper in his ear; otherwise it might rise to a deafening shout.   He was never afforded more than a snatched moment’s rest and that too was a torment; the awful inevitability of it, the way the voice of the Ring laboured so tirelessly to break him.  The Ranger had already shed too many layers of what had once kept him human.  The solace of rest and sleep had long been denied him; both lay far out of his reach.  Talion no longer needed to eat or to speak but there were limits to what even an undead Man could resist.  He was approaching his inevitable end-point, entering the final stages of a process that had begun the moment that he and Celebrimbor first cemented their alliance.  The Ranger had been at the end of his endurance and on the verge of surrender.  He’d already been pushed right to the brink.   </p>
<p>Then had come the Wraith’s capture and captivity at the hands of the Uruk Warchief and with it, against the odds, a few rare moments of clarity.  The magic and witchcraft that worked to quell the Nazgûl’s powers also dampened the effects of Isildur’s ring, quietening its insidious whispering and leaving Talion alone in his own thoughts for the first time since he had taken on the burden of bearing of it.  The release from its unceasing influence was a relief and a blessing - to begin with, though that quickly turned sour.  By this stage the Nazgûl was accustomed to spending more of his time in the Wraith-world than out of it, and as a result had become to a greater or lesser extent detached from all sense of his physical self.  Feats of mental projection, achieved by means of the Palantir captured in Minas Ithil compounded this effect; by now he was effectively divorced from the concerns of his flesh and blood body.  The crude and diverse array of physical torments to which he was subjected during his imprisonment dragged the Ranger forcibly back to an acute awareness of his corporeal form – and of its limits.</p>
<p>By the time the little Orc – by the time <em>Ratbag</em> -  approached him, the Nazgûl had been in the hands of his Uruk captors for no small amount time.  They’d used him cruelly, making a sport of refining and compounding the everyday indignities to which he was subjected.  The potions he’d been given disordered his mind and left him open to their every suggestion; pliable, and unable to resist.  Added to his torment at times had also been a despicable kind of pleasure, with the Nazgûl’s torturers taking delight in perverting his reactions, making his abused body respond in ways he’d been unable to prevent or control.</p>
<p>Night and day, they’d plagued him relentlessly.  That was why the Wraith had been so quick to assume that Ratbag was another of the Waystation Uruks, come to bait and barrack him.</p>
<p>Then the Orc had spoken to him using the old name, the Ranger’s half-remembered name that was already fading from the Nazgûl’s memory.  He’d not been able to recognize that either, not at first, but later – once the Orc had freed him – it started to come back to him.   This Orc was one he knew he’d seen before. </p>
<p>**</p>
<p>A moonlit night with ground-mist rising, not long after Talion first ventured into Mordor.  All was quiet on the outskirts of an Orcish encampment.  There’d been an Uruk slave tied to a whipping-post and left out on the boundary, an easy meal for prowling Caragors and Graugs.  The slave was scarred and skinny.  Undersized; stringy – all in all a most underwhelming specimen.  But still he’d had the audacity to call to Talion, hailing the Man and speaking to him directly of his plans.</p>
<p><em>“Ranger!  Come close if you want the Black Hand.  If you cut these ropes Ratbag will tell you everything!</em> <em>Those scum are pouring poison in your ear</em>.<em>”  </em></p>
<p>And the Ranger reached his hand out to the Uruk’s temple, preparing to sift through his thoughts even as he answered him.  “We’re going to find out what you know.”</p>
<p>Then had come a moment of searing mental connection – it was before Talion had learnt restraint in these matters and he’d seen through the scrawny Uruk’s eyes, seeing, knowing, feeling much more than he’d ever wanted, experiencing for a disorienting moment a cascade of the Orc’s thoughts and memories as if they were his own -</p>
<p>“<em>Your problem, Ranger, is the Warchiefs.  But Ratbag can teach you the ways of the Orc – make your plan work</em> -”</p>
<p>**</p>
<p>The vivid remembrance of that night sent other flashes of recollection sparking through the Wraith’s memory, echoing the words of the Waystation Guard, the hated guard when he rushed in, accusing the scrawny Orc of thieving -   </p>
<p>Ratbag, at the feet of another Orcish Captain, was once again bound and on his knees.  It occurred to the Wraith that he’d spent a fair amount of time in their early days getting the Uruk out of scrapes like this one, but it had never been a chore for him, exactly.  The Nazgûl wondered at what point that had come to be true.</p>
<p>The Captain drew his sword and pressed it against Ratbag’s throat.  “We don’t appreciate Uruks who pickpocket.”</p>
<p>Ratbag was indignant.  “All Orcs pickpocket.  Including you!”</p>
<p>The larger Uruk bared his teeth in a cruel, sneering grin.  “But I don’t get caught.”</p>
<p>That one, Talion had had to make haste and kill quickly.  But it was true.  Ratbag had been an ally or something like one once, and if for no other reason that night the Nazgûl spared him, and spirited him away from the destruction he wreaked across the rest of the Waystation encampment.  Using his Wraith-powers he moved both of them in an instant, not to one of the high Haedir Towers where once he would have flown, but to a hiding-place deep in the Elvish catacombs of the Dead City.</p>
<p>Soon afterwards had come a burning fever and agonising pain that had undone him.  And then the Orc….the Orc had offered his body to help him.  At first the Nazgûl hadn’t been in any condition to resist. </p>
<p>Afterwards, he was aware that perhaps he hadn’t wanted to. </p>
<p>If Talion was not wholly himself, through those fevered days that he and Ratbag spent together in the vault, neither was he the mindless supplicant, slave to the Dark Lord that he’d been ready to become.  Instead of relinquishing to the Ring’s Master what remained of his will, he clasped desperately onto the lifeline that the Orc, without a qualm or second thought, had thrown him.  After all a Nazgûl’s need to subjugate itself in the service of its master was paramount.  Possibly, through Ratbag, he even managed to find - and seize upon - an alternate kind of connection. </p>
<p>He and Ratbag had been intimate with one another.  This at least was something the Ranger knew: his skills had always lain in giving pleasure.  And where this Orc was concerned he already had more than a working knowledge of his preferences because, in that moment of mind-to-mind connection they’d shared by accident, Talion had experienced his private thoughts and deep desires as if they were his own.  What, for a burning instant he’d seen – that Ratbag dreamed of –  had to the strait-laced Ranger been glimpses of barely heard of, outlandish things.  He’d been shocked but not, to his surprise especially disgusted; the experience had left him feeling curious and wanting to learn more, more than anything.   </p>
<p>So, once the worst of the pain had left him, he set out with nothing but the aim of pleasing his partner in mind, sparing little thought for his own satisfaction.  It was the habit of a lifetime for Talion the Man - but for the Nazgûl there had also come a form of agonized, heightened bliss that had blindsided him with its intensity.  He’d been striving only to please and to satisfy, but it brought him to a new kind of ecstasy, different to anything he’d formerly known.</p>
<p>The preparations with which he’d been dosed; Talion retained enough of his reason – and wits – to recognize that they remained in his system, at least during his and the Orc’s initial trysts.   By the time he realized how much he’d underestimated the strength and persistence of the venom its effects, however much diluted had spread.  He and Ratbag were already under its influence.  Orc and Nazgûl couldn’t help but come together.  It happened again and again, often enough for the toxins to have little chance to dissipate. </p>
<p>Things…things got a little hazy, after that. </p>
<p>**</p>
<p>Of the time they spent afterwards, in the vault, Ratbag recalled nothing but brief excerpts of memory – or they were the product of his fevered imagination, perhaps.  Most of it involved images of him and the Nazgûl; the two of them, their bodies joined in darkness, sharing moments of pure, frenzied sensation.</p>
<p>Here they were lying side by side, the Nazgûl gripping his shoulders from behind, all the while uttering soft grunts of passion as it delivered the Orc of a thorough, vigorous fucking.  Ratbag was listening out, senses attuned for the slightest sound: the Wraith never made much noise during any of their couplings.  The Wraith never made much noise at all. </p>
<p>Now Ratbag had his legs splayed open across the creature’s lap.  He was grinding down on top of it, riding its erection for all he was worth.  The Wraith’s armour was an unyielding surface however.  Ratbag’s thighs, and the backs of his legs bore the brunt of it; afterwards they were criss-crossed by a network of shallow cuts and scrapes.  His skin felt as if it’d been shredded but still it was in the Orc’s opinion, worth every moment.  He and the Nazgûl had come within seconds of each other.  Ratbag as ever, first, crying out as he spent himself onto the dusty metal plate that covered his partner’s stomach.  There never was the slightest hint of expression or emotion from the Nazgûl and the iron mask it wore never came off, yet the Orc would <em>swear</em> that it had liked seeing that.  Wishful thinking perhaps, but could it have been enough to set the creature off, maybe?  Feeling, watching Ratbag use it to take his pleasure?  Hot on the heels of his own release the Orc knew he’d felt the powerful spasms of the Nazgûl’s orgasm begin inside him, almost immediately after. </p>
<p>The Wraith was large enough, and strong enough to be able to lift and pose Ratbag into any position it wished.  It took him that way sometimes, too.  The Orc might find himself braced in its arms, back to a wall with his feet dangling in the air.  Then the Nazgûl would put its head down and work both of them up to climax with a series of steady, impersonal thrusts.  There was always pleasure, granted – the fly venom saw to that.  But in his occasional moments of clarity it became too much even for Ratbag at times, being picked up and bent open and penetrated; the knowledge that he’d become nothing more than a willing puppet in the Nazgûl’s hands. </p>
<p>It didn’t happen often but when it did he’d close his eyes and think of Talion.  That’d help.</p>
<p>Other times were better.  The creature might want to make Ratbag cling to it, holding his legs spreadeagled as it speared into him, but providing little other support.  Ratbag would have to wind his arms tight round its neck so as to avoid falling.  From there he’d be able to press his face to the  strip of naked skin at the Nazgûl’s throat, the thin strip that lay between the bottom of its mask and the high collar of its armour; all that was visible of the Man beneath.  Ratbag would run his mouth and his nose over and over that narrow, tantalizing strip searching for, seeking….he wasn’t sure what.  The Nazgûl’s skin always felt unnaturally cold, clammy and grimy under his lips.  There’d be salt and a few traces of stubble but sometimes, very faint, buried under much stronger layers of old dust and dried blood and burning, he would catch just a hint of a here-and-gone, half-remembered scent.  Talion’s personal aroma, and even after all the time that had passed the Nazgûl carried the warm, familiar memory of it still.   These kinds of interlude, for some reason never lasted for long.  More often than not the Nazgûl would finish very quickly when he and Ratbag were face to face at close quarters like that. </p>
<p>Afterwards, after their trysts were done the Nazgûl would shove its mouth between Ratbag’s arse cheeks and begin lapping at his hole.  It was a recurring image, this one; after releasing itself in Ratbag’s body, the Wraith would push him onto his front and lodge itself between his legs.  Then it would clean him in his most intimate places using only its tongue and lips. </p>
<p>The creature spent a lot time tending Ratbag like that.  Cold mouth and cold member, those were the only portions the Wraith ever uncovered and those fleetingly, and never within Ratbag’s line of sight. </p>
<p>Through those early days of drug-induced intensity and isolation they were rarely far from each other.  The Wraith kept Ratbag close, crowding him with its bulky, armour-clad body; a regular and unabashed invader of the Orc’s personal space.  Even when they were apart, behind the blank plates of its mask it seemed always to be keeping close watch on him.  Ratbag supposed the Wraith remembered that he’d attempted to escape from it once.  It couldn’t know that he had little inclination now to try to leave.   And why should he?  The venom’s steadily encroaching effects left little room for a thought in his head beyond the ongoing pleasure he was experiencing.  He didn’t eat; he didn’t sleep.  Day and night didn’t mean much in the eternal blue-lit radiance of the vault.  In any case the Nazgûl was tireless.  It was always ready for Ratbag.  He supposed he must be lucky in a way; the way the Nazgûl was always so perfectly ready and willing to serve him.</p>
<p>That turned out to be Ratbag’s last coherent thought for some time.  As Orc and Nazgûl would soon find, their situation together wasn’t exactly tenable.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TBC</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. In Morgulduin Vale</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>Ratbag slowly came to an awareness of himself.  There was a blank - <em>space </em>– in his short-term memory and he had no idea where he was, or how he’d come to be there.  He was lying fully-clothed in the shallows, face-down on a riverbank and submerged to the chest in cold fresh water.  Gentle wavelets lapped around him.  He felt dreadfully cold but his thoughts, at last, were clear. </p>
<p>The Orc tried to turn over, but found himself hampered by a fixed point at his flank.  Cracking one crusted eye open he squinted up and saw the pommel of a broadsword, to which he’d been secured.  It had been plunged deep into the sediment, almost up to the hilt, which bore a familiar-looking series of Elvish runes engraved along the cross-piece.  This sword Ratbag was sure he recognized as being one of Talion’s, and the name of it was Urfael, if the Orc was any judge.  The weapon had been positioned with care, so that the blade lay absolutely flat against the skin of his back.  It had been fed through the armhole of his bone-and-leather jerkin and pushed out through the side, in a way that haphazardly moored him to the gritty riverbank below.</p>
<p>Someone, the Orc thought to himself, must have gone to a certain amount of trouble to keep him from being carried away downstream.</p>
<p>It wasn’t that Ratbag could feel himself being watched; it must have been some another type, or form of connection.  With bleary eyes he looked about until he saw it.  <em>Yes</em>.  It was only confirmation of what he’d already aware of, down in his gut.  And there it was, the Nazgûl: a fell shape made up of hard lines and cruel edges that Ratbag realized, to his dismay, he’d already become <em>hopelessly</em> imprinted upon.  </p>
<p>Now that the Orc was back in his right mind he was beginning to have grave misgivings about the nature and intimacy of the relations he’d been sharing with the creature.  It was only a shrakhin’ Nazgûl he’d been dallying with; of course Ratbag had misgivings!  He could insist to himself the thing <em>wasn’t Talion</em> yet there was no doubt that he was drawn towards it.  Ratbag’s responses to the Wraith were rooted deep, almost on an instinctual level, and knowing that it had stayed nearby came as a keen comfort to him.  It helped quell the awful clamour of doubt and panic that had been building in Ratbag’s breast from the moment he’d opened his eyes and found himself alone.</p>
<p>Still masked and wearing its full suit of armour, the Wraith was crouching hunched in the lee of the grassy cliff behind them.  That part of the riverbank would have been in deep shadow earlier in the day but was now almost completely exposed to the pale yellow light of a – frankly idyllic – cool, springtime sunset.   Where Talion would once have been happy to idle in such a spot, revelling in its beauty and seclusion, the creature he’d become now shrank from the sun’s weak, slanting rays. </p>
<p>Truth be told the Nazgûl also shrank from the river water, too.  The Orc supposed it must have been standing watch on him from the shelter of the riverbank for the best part of the day.  He’d spent long enough in the water to feel chilled to the bone and wondered for how long he’d been half-floating there.</p>
<p>As soon as Ratbag began struggling – unsuccessfully – to free himself, the Wraith was beside him.  Its right gauntlet came off, exposing one of the creature’s grey-skinned, black-veined hands.  Ratbag balked at the sight; the curse that was afflicting Talion now clear to see in broad daylight.  He flinched and thrashed away from the contact instinctively; the prospect of being touched by the corpse-like appendage appalled him - but to no avail.  The Nazgûl pressed its cold fingers to his forehead regardless, and kept them in place until it was satisfied.  Then, taking hold of Ratbag under his armpits, it began hauling him further up the beach.</p>
<p>There the Nazgûl set him upright on his feet - more or less.  It turned him round to face it, taking a proprietorial hold on his shoulders and as it did, somehow the Orc knew exactly what it intended.  Perhaps he’d been forewarned; after all it had flown with him to the Elvish catacomb once before.  Why it wished to return to such a place Ratbag could only guess.  The many hours of darkness they’d spent in the crypt – the thought of being dragged back, being interred alive in that cold dreadful shrine to the dead – it filled Ratbag with panic.  The weight of lost years and sense of oppression; in the absence of the drugs that had blunted his perception it was taking on an unreal, frightful quality -</p>
<p>“No more of your Wraith-nonsense.”  The Orc felt weak as a new-born Caragor kit as he beat his fists against the Nazgûl’s chest.  He made no impression at all through the intervening  layers of tough armour plate and he bared his teeth at the creature, interspersing his words with a series of feeble blows as he struck at it again.  “You’re not taking Ratbag back to that – underground – <em>Elvish</em> – <em>sepulchre</em>.  I won’t go with you, I tell you!  No!  <em>No</em>.”</p>
<p>To his surprise the Nazgûl released its hold of him at once.  Ratbag was more than a little astonished not to have been cut down on the spot.  Instead the creature fell back, not going far, but it did make a point of keeping its distance.</p>
<p>Ratbag sagged down where he was standing.  His altercation with the Nazgûl had taken the very last of his strength and he was lightheaded, with black spots blooming and fading ominously in his vision.  He fought to stay conscious, holding the one rule in life for an Uruk of Mordor, to never under any circumstances show any sign of injury or weakness uppermost in his mind. </p>
<p>In his weakened state however it was very much of a losing battle that Ratbag was fighting.  

</p><p>Time passed, and as the sun went down the riverbank sank into a soft, glowing dusk.  Skeins of Hell-bats flitted through the cool evening air and went skipping and swooping low over the water, hawking after their clumsy-flying insect prey.  But there were also hunters waiting beneath the surface, and from time to time one of the bats would itself be sucked into the maw of a gigantic Mordain catfish, leaving nothing but a ring of bubbles slowly spreading downstream.  For his part Ratbag registered nothing of it, not much more until a sour taste that filled his mouth.  It was followed by a swift bloom of warmth in his stomach that quickly spread to his extremities.  A flask filled with grog had been pressed to his lips. The Wraith was encouraging him to swallow.</p>
<p>The heady brew revived Ratbag – or at least gave the illusion of it.  There had been a fire lit in front of him, after a fashion.  In the centre of a loosely-stacked pile of driftwood stood the Nazgûl’s sword Urfael.  Enchanted flames were dancing off the surfaces.  Meanwhile, its owner had obviously been busy.     </p>
<p>Over the fire was hanging a roasting slab of…something.  The meat was being burned, more than it was broiling but the aroma was enough to make Ratbag’s stomach clench with hunger, even as it queasily turned over.</p>
<p>The scorching meat; the mismatched heap of damp logs and kindling; the way the Nazgûl itself hung back instead of warming itself by the fire: everything on the riverbank was like that, looking more than a little off-kilter.  It was as if in making camp the Wraith was putting to use skills it barely comprehended, let alone made use of anymore.  Ratbag’s heart sank.  It was another keen reminder – if any were needed - that the quietly capable Ranger he’d once known was gone. </p>
<p>The Orc had never heard of being homesick and if asked, would’ve had a hard time trying to define it.  Nevertheless the sight of the food and the fire sent a strange, acute sensation pricking through his breast, a homesick kind of yearning for something he’d fleetingly experienced before. </p>
<p>**</p>
<p>Ratbag used to watch the Ranger in the old days, sometimes.  Always from a distance; he took care never to approach close enough to alert the Man’s finely tuned, Elf-enhanced senses or to otherwise draw his attention.  That night as on so many others he found the Gravewalker had set up camp in a pleasantly secluded location.  He was sitting peacefully on the ground with his swords by his side and his legs stretched out in front of him.</p>
<p>Talion might’ve looked like a Man but he wasn’t one.  He could slip into the Wraith-world and see in the dark, and the undying form his body had taken required neither warmth nor sustenance.  And yet night after night Ratbag would find him, taking his rest in front of a low, banked fire.  There’d even be food cooked or cooking, more often than not.  Did he take solace from the illusion of these creature comforts perhaps?  If there was any other reason behind the night-time charade he enacted, Ratbag couldn’t fathom it.</p>
<p>“Here, Orc,” Talion called to him suddenly, without turning his head.  “There’s plenty to spare.”  Well of course there was.  Ratbag could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he’d seen the Ranger eat.</p>
<p>He and the Gravewalker had entered into an uneasy partnership.  Ratbag would provide the insider knowledge and information that lay behind the Ranger’s scheme of power-grabs and campaigns; meanwhile the Orc was set to establish himself as a Warchief, with Talion helping him to eliminate the competition.</p>
<p>Ratbag kept himself down low, making his approach from an oblique angle, wary and mistrustful.  He was aware that he’d been….<em>invited, </em>but Ratbag’s status had always been that of a much-maligned outsider and he was mindful that their situation could at any moment change.  </p>
<p>Earlier that afternoon the Orc had been unlucky enough to fall foul of a rival’s group of Bodyguards.  They’d had Ratbag outclassed as well as outnumbered and had seized the opportunity to deliver him of a sound group thrashing.  Nothing seemed <em>too</em> badly damaged, though under his clothes, Ratbag was painfully aware that he was battered and bruised from head to foot.  They’d left him with two blackened eyes and a split lip.  He’d also chipped a tooth, and a fistful of hair from the nape of his neck was missing.</p>
<p>The Ranger made no comment as he took in Ratbag’s dishevelment.  In silence he handed him a share of the food he’d been cooking -  as ever it was a very generous portion - and made space for him by the fire.  Side by side they sat there for a time, listening to the crack and sizzle of the flames, with Ratbag gulping and guzzling his portion of tender roasted Graug-steak greedily.</p>
<p>“Orc, don’t you think perhaps,” Talion began at length, “that you’ve been taking too much on with all this Warchiefing business?”</p>
<p>Ratbag jumped to his feet, instantly nettled by his companion’s reaction.  What, was Talion saying that he didn’t think Ratbag was up to it?  There was no way he was going to allow the Ranger to wriggle out of their agreement at this late stage - not without a fight, at any rate!</p>
<p>“Now hold on, Ranger!” he cried, “Ratbag’s maybe come in for a little - rough-housing, lately, but that’s his business and he’s fine with it!  What you’re not seeing is the bigger picture.”</p>
<p>“I can see that your fellow Uruks are advantaged by their size and their strength in numbers.”  Talion replied, regarding Ratbag with a keen look.  “How many Bodyguards were you up against this time, Ratbag?”  </p>
<p>“What goes on in the Orc-barracks stays in the Orc-barrack,” Ratbag told him flatly.  “Ratbag might not look it, but he can give as good as he gets.”   The Orc paused, his mouth twisting into an ugly snarl as an unwelcome thought occurred to him.  It stood up as a perfectly valid, reasonable explanation for Talion’s sudden and unexpected concern for his well-being, and yet for some reason it also had him instinctively flattening his ears and raising the hackles all across his back.  “Ha!  Now Ratbag sees what you’re getting at,” he spat.  “You’re just after protecting ‘your investment,’ Gravewallker.  Wanting Ratbag on the inside so’s he can keep on  spying for you.  Is that it?”</p>
<p>The Ranger’s face changed, making him look almost wounded for an instant.  “That’s one way you could look at our situation,” he acknowledged.  “Granted, if our mission’s to succeed, I will need you to at least try and stay in one piece.”  He kept on talking as Ratbag, visibly subsiding, took his seat again beside the fire.  “Look here Orc.  You can’t have any objections to that, can you?” </p>
<p>Ratbag hung his head, already abashed by his outburst.  “Guess not, Ranger,” he muttered.</p>
<p>“I’m glad it’s settled then.”  Talion said, and with an easy movement he shoved the Orc’s knee, knocking against it with his own.  The companionable gesture left them in just a small amount of contact after, but neither Man nor Orc seemed much inclined to remedy it.   They didn’t speak, and for a while the pair sat comfortably, watching rising scatters of sparks from their fire drifting up into the dark night sky above them.  Ratbag caught himself with a start after a moment, jolted awake as the truncated, chuffing roars of a pride of Dire Caragors began sounding in the distance.  Mordor was a savage, perilous place and as much as he’d been lulled by the firelight and by having a full belly, he certainly hadn’t intended to doze!  But the Caragors were a long way off as yet, and on top of it, at some point Talion’s arm had come to rest as heavy, comforting weight across Ratbag’s shoulders.  For once the Orc felt so drowsy and safe and so strangely secure that it seemed the most natural thing in the world at that moment for him to turn his head and rest his face against the Ranger’s side.</p>
<p>His companion seemed to think so too.  “That’s better, isn’t it, Orc?” Talion said, and to Ratbag, his voice was every bit as warm and soothing as the firelight.  “<em>Much </em>better.  In future, you’d best stay close to me.”</p>
<p>It had been hard for him to credit at first, but that was when Ratbag finally began to realize that perhaps the Ranger wasn’t <em>only</em> protecting his investment.  Though really, this was Talion all over: it was his nature to want to defend those less fortunate; a habit that extended even the weakest and most worthless, for hadn’t he also taken into his protection the likes of Ratbag with scarce a second thought?   Ratbag remembered then how the Gravewalker had been with Hirgon, and his patient treatment of the rebel slaves and other human Outcasts they’d encountered in Mordor.  If anything, he cared too much.  That character flaw, if it was a flaw - that trait lay at the root of all Talion’s troubles; from his choices in life to the path of his fate and where that led: to the doom that had at last befallen him.</p>
<p>**</p>
<p>As a Ranger at the Black Gate Talion had devoted his life to the defence of Gondor’s border, and in undeath he’d stood with Celebrimbor against all the armies of Mordor.  Even after the Elf’s betrayal he hadn’t ceded the battle. He’d risen up again, determined to go on fighting.   </p>
<p>Now Ratbag was remembering other snippets, too.   In the vault; after fever heat and pain that consumed him, the abrupt relief of being dunked straight into cold water.  The Nazgûl, floundering there at his side, hampered by the weight of its armour as it struggled to support Ratbag on the riverbank, and now the burning meat and that smoke-billowing, pitiable attempt at a fire.  Ratbag could finally see it for what it was, at last.  Talion’s impulse to help the helpless - it hadn’t left him.  Whatever he was now, half-enwraithened Nazgûl aberration or not, by some twist of fate the poor, unfortunate bastard was still in there.  By the Man’s actions if nothing else Ratbag reckoned he’d always be able to recognize him. Talion was <em>still</em> trying so hard to go on doing the right thing.  </p>
<p>The Orc got to his feet – a little shakily perhaps, and faced the Nazgûl.  Enough of this looming darkly, and brooding mutely in silence pig-headedness!  If Talion really was here, he was going to have to shrakhing well show it to Ratbag, by starting talking to him!   </p>
<p>Barely a beat behind him the Wraith stood.  Ratbag hadn’t registered it until this point but the creature’s movements were also looking less than steady.  It shook with fine tremors as it withdrew Urfael, retrieving the weapon unscathed from the flames.</p>
<p>The Wraith didn’t speak; he didn’t need to.  Submission and surrender were written clear in his body language, in every inch of his hunching, hulking frame.   </p>
<p>Right in front of the Ratbag  the Nazgûl dropped down to his knees.  Sword and half-sword; he unsheathed and laid them both at the Orc’s feet.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TBC</p>
<p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Cat and mouse</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>As the sun set, the Nazgûl laid his arms at Ratbag’s feet, yielding to him quietly and with a minimum of fuss. </p><p>It wasn’t what Ratbag had been anticipating by any means, this complete and unexpected capitulation on the part of the Nazgûl for, in common with the Elf who’d once instructed him, in the past Talion had always ruled by brute force and might.  Ratbag had seen for himself how successfully Celebrimbor had managed to insidiously indoctrinate in Talion his own bleak instincts; the intolerance and cruelty that had driven the Elf and served him so well all through his centuries-long quest for domination.</p><p>The humble Ranger had been no match for him.  Celebrimbor’s relentlessness and single-minded determination had obliterated the last traces of the humility and decency that Talion had in him - or so Ratbag had at one point thought. </p><p>This new development went against the grain.  Now what, the Orc wondered to himself, could have brought about the former Ranger’s about-face change in attitude?  What on earth could Talion be thinking, really?</p><p>At a loss to know what else to do, Ratbag stooped down and retrieved Talion’s dagger Acharn; the broken-bladed one that <em>hadn’t</em> just been burning merrily in the fire, thanks very much.</p><p>As he did it the Wraith’s shoulders slumped and a long sigh hissed from behind his mask.  It was an impossibly weary sound and together with his posture it telegraphed utter dejection and defeat.  He removed one of his gloves – taking it from the left hand this time, once again exposing his changed, corrupted flesh -</p><p>That, as well as the baleful glow of Isildur’s Nazgûl ring.  </p><p>The ugly orange gem set in it burned with malice, like the light from a star shining with ill-omen.</p><p>Talion was still on his knees in front of Ratbag and with that he bowed his head.  With deliberate care he spread his fingers and placed his hand on the river-worn hearthstone beside him.  He held it there, making his meaning obvious.  He was inviting Ratbag to cut the ring from his hand; asking the Orc to take the step that to all intents and purposes would finish him.</p><p>Ratbag was appalled; also, incensed.  A clumsy throw and he was flinging the dagger as far away as he could from him.  It didn’t flash, fall, or shoot like a streamer of the northern morn exactly, but it <em>did</em> make it as far as the body of water behind them, where it hit the shallows with a faint and distant splash.  With a decisive movement the Orc quickly kicked Urfael far out of reach, out of harm’s way too. </p><p>“Shrakhin’ <em>none</em> of that,” he snarled, more vehemently than perhaps he’d intended, for it seemed to catch the Wraith’s attention enough to jolt him out of his suicidal reverie – at least for the time being.  </p><p>Ratbag fell to his knees too, trembling with delayed reaction.  He caught hold of his former companion by the shoulders, feeling torn between trying to shake some sense into him, and pulling him into a clumsy, heartbroken embrace.  “Surrendering to Ratbag, giving yourself over to him now, is that it?” he exclaimed, incredulous.  “In that case there’s going to be none of that - no topping yourself!” </p><p><em>Not when Ratbag’s only </em>just<em> managed to work it through his thick head that you’re still in there, you poor shrakhing bastard, and you’re still Talion, aren’t you?</em></p><p>“Nazgûl!  Ratbag’s telling you: you’re ruddy, bloody <em>not </em>to do it.  Understood?”</p><p>As ever, he went on to push his luck: “now swear it to me.”</p><p>And the Nazgûl had sworn it, giving his word with a slow, single nod of the head.</p><p>After that there was little else to tell.  In stilted silence they’d taken up places on opposite sides of the fire.  All the budding warmth and camaraderie that the Orc and Ranger had once shared between them was gone.  Ratbag’s intention had been to wait out the night, but he was still weakened by the effects of the Fly-venom and kept falling into doze after fitful doze.  It made no difference.  Whenever he woke the Nazgûl was there.  Watching him.  Waiting.</p><p>Then, in the dead hours late that night, a Nazgûl – one of the other Nazgûl - passed over them, travelling at altitude.</p><p>The three-quarters moon had set.  The fire Talion built was reduced to a heap of dull, white-smoking coals when drifting down from the misty heights above them came the impossibly slow, sweeping wing-beats of an enormous, flying beast.  The piercing shriek of its rider cleaved through the darkness a scant moment later, deadened by distance and sounding mercifully far-off and remote.</p><p>On hearing it Ratbag’s Nazgûl – the one in hand - was on his feet at once, galvanized into action.  The Orc had time only to take in a single glimpse of its triple-horned head, ominously silhouetted against a backdrop of starry sky before that prescient sense, that had served him so well in his past dealings with the creature told him exactly what it planned.  The way that under its armour its muscles bunched and tensed; the intent upward focus in its gaze - it was about to leap from ground to sky, in answer to the call of its own  Wraithly kin.</p><p>Now Ratbag was scrambling upright too.  What the blazes did Talion want to fly up there for - to pick a fight with the second Nazgûl?  Or was he being drawn to it?  Was he planning on joining forces with the cursed thing?  </p><p>This was no time to find out!  Galvanized by panic, Ratbag bounded forward, making a wild grab for his preternaturally altered companion.  He tackled hold of one of the Nazgûl’s arms – as well as by wrapping and gripping tight with his legs -  just at the point the Wraith (shrakh’s sake!) was about to lift into the air.  The Orc hung on, dragging him back down to earth with all his might.</p><p>“Nazgûl!” Ratbag cried.  “Talion, no!” </p><p>But he yelled too loud in haste and urgency, and of course it was the exact the wrong thing to do.  A split second later and the other Nazgûl’s cry was shrieking out above them as the creature wheeled its mount around for a second pass over their heads.  </p><p>The odd thing was that Talion’s corporeal form had not yet been diminished.  Even in his enwraithened condition he was still as much of a strapping slab of muscle-bound Tark as he’d ever been, and given this continuing state of physical affairs it was with surprising ease that Ratbag was able to wrestle the former Ranger down onto his back. </p><p>The Nazgûl was malleable; unresisting as he went with him, and allowed himself to be bent. </p><p>He was putty in Ratbag’s hands, really.  </p><p>Ratbag however, was blind to all of it.  Breathing hard in short, panicky huffs he bore down onto his companion using all of his meagre weight, legs straddling his hips and with his clawed hands pressing down onto the Nazgûl’s shoulders, continuing his desperate – and also his probably, in all likelihood futile - bid to prevent the creature from taking flight.</p><p>They remained like that only for a moment before, with an effortless flex of muscle the Nazgûl was flipping Ratbag over; shifting him with insulting ease, almost as an afterthought, so their positions were reversed.  He took care to hold the bulk of his weight away from Ratbag but kept his body covering him, remaining dangerously close.  </p><p>The Nazgûl’s cloak, no more than a stained and tattered remnant, he unfurled over them both. </p><p>Ratbag hooked his fingers through the wide leather baldric that crossed the Nazgûl’s chest and whispered to him urgently.  After all it had worked for him before: stranger things had happened. </p><p>“Ratbag - Ratbag commands you!” he hissed.  “Stay safe - stay quiet.  Stay away from that thing up there.  You’re not to.”</p><p>Whatever else the Orc had been about to say was cut off by the harsh press of Talion’s iron-clad fingertips to his mouth, silencing him.  He thought, or imagined he could feel the Nazgûl willing him to be quiet, and belatedly he understood what it was about: it was trying to hide them from the flying Nazgûl.  </p><p>Meanwhile the second Ring-Wraith swept overhead, circling back and forth, much closer to the ground this time and evidently scanning up and down the riverbank.  A faint, acrid-scented downdraft of air accompanied the other Nazgûl’s passing, displaced by its mount’s ungainly wings.</p><p>Time crept to a standstill as they lay there waiting to be discovered - or worse, for weren’t the flying steeds of the Nazgûl said to be the most deadly, trap-sprung, fire-breathing things?  It gave Ratbag ample chance to think about his actions.  He’d taken a chance on outright commanding the Wraith – his Ringwraith that was the thing, and he’d done it for no reason other than that it had worked so surprisingly well before.  </p><p>Beneath the fragile shelter of Ranger’s cloak they waited, counting heavy wingbeats as the airborne Nazgûl executed another low-swooping pass overhead.  At last there came a final, keening cry that changed with distance as the other Ringwraith spurred its mount up into the skiey vaults above. </p><p>Like a long-held breath releasing tension, the small night-noises on the riverbank resumed, hesitant at first and then in piping chorus; the abrupt <em>zip-zip</em> of Cave-crickets, and hunting clicks of night-flying Swiftlets, that sounded like the faint tick of a fingernail flicking glass. </p><p>A shudder had run the full length of the Nazgûl’s body the moment the second Wraith abandoned its search.   Now he lifted his weight away from Ratbag with another ragged sigh.  His head was hanging wearily and his movements as he began to move away were uncoordinated and clumsy.  He looked as if there was something wrong with him.   </p><p>Something <em>was</em> wrong, probably.  Ratbag knew the feeling well; had felt for himself and far too frequently the crash and debilitating backwash of reaction that followed an intense episode of stress.  And on top of it, if the Nazgûl was anything like Ratbag, no doubt he was sore and sick, still suffering from the toxins he’d been dosed with too. </p><p>“Talion.”  The Orc steadied him with a press of the hand to the dusty breast-plate of his armour.   “You look all done-in.  Why don’t you let Ratbag take next watch.”</p><p>Still the Nazgûl didn’t speak, but by now Ratbag was more than used to that.   The thought occurred to him  –  and not for the first time – that quite possibly the poor sod shrakhing couldn’t.  Not that it mattered; the Orc knew he had enough words – <em>plenty</em> of words – for both of them. </p><p>He helped the Wraith lie down in the sand.  “You said it yourself,” he went on, “that time after Ratbag had his arse handed to him by a whole pack of Bodyguards, remember?   From now on, you’d best stay close to me.”</p><p> </p><p>TBC.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Hunting for lodgings</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>The night had grown old in the time they’d spent hiding from the second Nazgûl, and from there it was only a short step to morning.</p><p>As the sun rose the Nazgûl was still lying where he was on the sand, on his side and crashed out in more than one sense.  Solid, stolid and unyielding, he was a tree felled in a forest, or – or a Mountain-troll petrified in stone, caught unawares by the first light of day -   </p><p>With a curl of his lip Ratbag abruptly gave up hunting metaphors and stood, preparing to find something more productive to occupy himself with instead.  First he rekindled the fire.  Talion he saw, had gathered - or else had used his otherworldly powers to summon quite the stack of firewood; this in spite of the unfortunate Ranger, by all accounts at least from last night’s reckoning, being no longer quite certain what he should be doing with it.  </p><p>Ratbag rinsed and refilled the grog-flask he’d drunk from previously and put water to boil.  Next he retrieved some of the food his companion had provided.  Judging from the tell-tale coating of singed hair and blackened skin, it looked like it was a slice hacked from the rump of a hanging Caragor carcass – a common-enough sight around the average Orcish encampment.  The meat was burnt on the outside but remained raw to running bloody on the inner.  Not that Ratbag was fussy; he’d had to make do – and make do often, with far worse.  He chewed moodily at the food as he took stock. </p><p>They were on the banks of the Morgulduin, that much was obvious, for there was only one river that ran anywhere near the boundaries of the Dead City.  They remained far enough however, from that Nazgûl-haunted fortress of enchantments for the corrupting glow that shone, day and night from Minas Morgul’s tower to be little more than a sickly haze, a discoloured tint to the morning sunlight.</p><p>The Orc shifted nervously, very aware that he was taking a chance with the fire.  If nothing else their close-call with the flying Ringwraith had shown him how exposed they were, out in the open here.  But there was no chance of seeking shelter, not until he could get the Nazgûl….the one that had been Talion….up and moving.  On its feet again.</p><p>Bolting the last mouthfuls of his meal, Ratbag scrambled his way down to the water’s edge, where he  set about gathering a handful of finger-thick twigs from the scrubby willow-brush bushes that were growing there.  Once the twigs were picked it was easy for him to strip away the slippery, sap-rich, bark.  He added a pinch of the unopened buds for good measure, using his claw-tips to make a clean cut of the sections the way Talion had once shown him.  This was to avoid damaging the plant.  Ratbag couldn’t really have said why this was necessary, but as it had been important enough for his companion to mention, he took care to follow the instructions the Ranger had given him.</p><p>The bark and other material he fed – gingerly – in through the neck of the grog-bottle he’d left on the fire.  Then he set the simmering mixture to steep.  Talion had never eaten much food when Ratbag had previously known him, but he had needed to drink, and he’d been in the habit of collecting all sorts of flowering bits, and tubers and greenstuffs to flavour it with.  </p><p>The Orc asked him about it at one point.  “These herbs have health-giving properties,” Talion smiled, by way of a reply and true enough, when he got hurt as so often happened, or was otherwise downhearted the stuff did seem to act as a pick me up, and helped lift his spirits.   </p><p>The tea Ratbag was now brewing was in much the same vein.  It was going to turn out to be bitter and wildly astringent but he knew from experience that it had painkilling, and fever-reducing properties, too.  The effects would be mild, however.  It wouldn’t do much in the scheme of things but it was all they had.  It would have to do. </p><p>While Ratbag had been otherwise occupied the Nazgûl seemed to have revived, somewhat.  In the place where once it had been lying it was now squatting, oddly docile, on its haunches.  Under the dull black carapace of its armour the Nazgûl was a raw and rough-hewn shape.  Unmoving. </p><p>Block-like<em>.</em></p><p>Constrained by its mask, it was bereft of speech and sight.  How much – <em>how much</em> did Ratbag want to get that awful, suffocating monstrosity taken off him?  </p><p>He would dearly have liked to see the creature’s face again, if only for its fading resemblance to Talion and he approached without thinking.  “Let Ratbag – why don’t you let Ratbag see about helping you with that, Ranger.”</p><p>The Nazgûl didn’t reply.  It looked <em>far</em> more terrifying in broad daylight.  Ratbag had to remind himself, forcibly, of the Man beneath.  He drew closer, telling himself that he was doing this only for the Ranger’s sake. </p><p>At the grimy strip of flesh that lay exposed between the Nazgûl’s mask and the plates covering his armoured body, Ratbag could see the heavy pulse of Talion’s heartbeat.  It showed as an impossibly slow, stop-and-start flutter of blood in the large vessels of his neck, only just visible under the surface of his skin.</p><p>And now Ratbag - shrakh help him – could vividly remember the throb of that halting pulse beneath his lips, and how exquisite it had felt to ride them both to satiation, those many times they had come together in the crypt -</p><p>
  <em>The shock of cold from the Nazgûl’s steel-hard spear-shaft; how quickly it had drawn heat from the Orc’s body; the Wraith’s low, stuttering gasps of pleasure as Ratbag warmed it from within -   </em>
</p><p>Perhaps – perhaps Ratbag’s continuing investment in the Nazgûl wasn’t <em>solely</em> on account of the Man that Talion had once been.</p><p>…shrakh help him.</p><p>Ratbag raked his claws through his hair, shaking his head in an attempt to dispel that disconcerting thought, as well as its associated (and needless to say, highly diverting) imagery.  There was simply no use in mooning after him, not in the Wraith’s current condition.  It was going to be up to Ratbag - for once - to put things right.  They needed safety, and shelter; a refuge they could lie up in and lick their wounds, so to speak.  And in order to find a place like that….Ratbag was going to have to go scouting.</p><p>He set the grog-flask down within easy reach.  “You sit tight Ranger,” he told Talion. “By the time you’ve drunk that, Ratbag’ll be back.”</p><p>Predictably, the Nazgûl wasn’t having any of it.   Barely a beat behind Ratbag it tottered to its feet.  The thought that Talion was obviously unwilling to let him out of his sight warmed the Orc’s - heart even at the same time as it made him want to grind his teeth in exasperation. </p><p><em>Right.</em>  So it looked as if this was going to be a group outing then, wasn’t it?</p><p>**</p><p>There was an art to Vat-keeping, or so the more blow-hard old timers liked to insist.  The results weren’t always consistent – as Ratbag himself would be the first to acknowledge, so perhaps there was even something in it: once in a while in the odd batch, one or other of the fresh-spawned Uruks might emerge a bit brain-addled; slow and stupid, at least to begin with.  In most cases these laggards could be taught – or talked, round.  That was where the likes of Ratbag came in.  He’d always been irrepressibly garrulous, and was possessed of a degree of forbearance uncommon among Orcs.  ‘Vat-keeper’s Lackey’ wasn’t a title any Uruk would willingly seek out for himself, but in his time Ratbag had often been called that, as well as other, far less complimentary epithets.  Still, it was work he could do so he’d taken it.  For some reason, caretaking his fellow recruits had come easily to him.</p><p>Straight out of the vat the newly-made Uruks came into the world full-grown, and already in theory equipped with every bit of knowledge and know-how they needed to operate in it.   The problem was that in practice not all of them quite realized it yet, not straight out of the gate.  Ratbag’s job was to jog these Uruks’ memories. </p><p>There he’d be, dwarfed by a clutch of late-blooming slowcoaches, some so fresh off Mordor’s Uruk production line that they were still slick with the muck and fluids of the birthing-pit.  The smallest of them would tower over Ratbag by a clear head and shoulders, at least.  To an Orc they’d be glowering, stoop-shouldered, beetle-browed.  These characters learned quickly but more often than not Ratbag would have to start off by coaching them in the basics: how to step one foot in front of the other and not fall over; the correct way to talk and breathe at the same time.  That an Uruk should avoid trying to reach his hand straight into the fire – everyday life-skills, that sort of thing.  </p><p>All of this stood him in good stead now.  It meant the Orc had bucketloads of experience in dealing with potentially hostile and reluctant pupils who – just like Talion, in his current state - were also off-the-scale physically imposing - as well as arguably, a tad addlepated.</p><p>And when it came to the Nazgûl in hand – well, at least there was only one of him.</p><p>Bearing the lessons of old in mind, Ratbag twisted a scrap of cloth round the sides of the grog-flask.  Just as a basic precaution: there was no use in letting anyone get unnecessarily scalded.  “Get that down your neck,” he advised, pushing the bundle into the Nazgûl’s hands, which grasped hold of it by reflex.   “You’d best bring that along, if you’re going to be coming with.”</p><p>With that they set off.  Ratbag didn’t know whether to be reassured or unnerved by the sight of the Nazgûl falling meekly into step behind him.</p><p>By keeping one eye on the faint green sky-glow that emanated from Minas Morgul’s citadel, it was easy for Ratbag to strike out in the opposite direction to the city.  They followed the river upstream at first – pausing only to retrieve Talion’s broken-bladed sword from the shallows where, the previous evening, the Orc had peremptorily thrown it. </p><p>The Wraith took possession of the dagger without comment, complaint or….or any visible sign of emotion at all, really.  For his part Ratbag was relieved that Acharn seemed none the worse for wear. </p><p>Fortunately.</p><p>Ratbag was aware that following the Morgulduin’s course would bring them close to the foot of the Cirith Ungol Pass. From there their path would lead them straight into the black-beating heart of Mordor - yes, Mordor where the shadows, as well as a <em>shrakh-tonne</em> of aggro, lie.  He and the Ranger absolutely couldn’t be doing with any of that, not in Talion’s less than fighting-fit condition.  In short order Ratbag led them off along the first detour from the riverbank that looked likely.</p><p>It took them on an uphill course that wended up into the foothills of the Mountains of Shadow, heading south and east.  The ground they were walking on – that made up the slope of the mountainside, as far as the eye could see - was an odd, friable kind of clinker-soil; the product no doubt of one or more of the many volcanoes in the vicinity.  The substrate shifted readily underfoot but otherwise the going was easy.  They gained altitude and soon arrived at the borders of strange, open forest made up of sparse stands of young pine trees.</p><p>Orc and Ranger passed into the relative shelter of the wood.  The air smelled fresh and clear – for Mordor, and was imbued with the faint, sweet aroma of pine-resin.  In other circumstances, it would’ve very nearly been pleasant.  Ratbag, however, was beginning to fret.  He’d wanted to get them out of harm’s way, but not to take them so far off the beaten track as to be stuck in the utter arse-end of beyond.  Moreover he feared for the Nazgûl.  His companion, already ailing, had not done well exposed to the bright morning sunshine.  For all the awesome might of the Wraith-powers he had at his disposal, he was visibly quailing.  And was it any wonder?  He was a creature of darkness now for shrakh’s sake, anyone could see that!  What had Ratbag been thinking, blithely striking out on a morning constitutional with such a thing?</p><p>The Orc berated himself, wondering if it would have been better if he’d allowed Talion to use his eldritch abilities to fly them back to the vaults under the Dead City.  Given the death’s-door state the former Ranger found himself in, perhaps a crypt would’ve represented somewhat of a better…fit.</p><p>So intent was Ratbag on second guessing the choices he’d had to make that he almost missed noticing it - a squarish, stone-built building tucked in among a group of young pines that had grown up close around its walls.  It stood between two hills at the far end of the shoulder of level ground they were crossing and was potentially the kind of refuge he’d been searching for all along.  Ratbag rushed pell-mell towards it.  The place had been long abandoned and he could see no sign, or catch scent of recent occupation.  It looked promising; well off the beaten track but not too far, and it was even fortified: it had been built in the style of a small – a <em>very</em> small - castle, cube-shaped, low-roofed, and with windows - such as it had windows - reduced to narrow, defensive slits. </p><p>What had once been a heavy wooden door was standing partly open and the Orc was able to push past it easily enough.  Inside it was dark and quiet, just the thing to accommodate a recalcitrant Nazgûl.  Ratbag noted in passing that the walls of the shelter were disproportionately thick.  They looked sturdy enough to withstand even a Siege-Beast’s direct hit but this limited the amount of floorspace indoors however; the single chamber that made up the whole of the ground floor would’ve measured no more than a half-dozen or so of his paces square.  Not that there was much room left for pacing distances as the place was packed to the doors with debris; with haphazard heaps of dusty nets and worm-ridden drying-racks, as well as other kinds of animal-trapping paraphernalia.  Despite the sheer quantity, anything of use or value had long since been looted or otherwise removed.</p><p>He poked around and soon found his way to a second storey, accessed by a steeply spiralling stone staircase that stood in one corner of the room.  The upstairs was another open space, bounded by four lime-washed walls and set directly under the wooden rafters of the roof.  Built into the nearest wall was an open fireplace, complete with iron pot-hooks and a cooking-grate.  A wood-panelled sleeping area lay opposite.  This looked to have been the living quarters for the visiting hunters or trappers who would’ve stayed at the lodge.</p><p>Adorning the walls – if those were the right words – was a collection of iron jaw-traps, the same style that would be laid in the grass for catching Caragors, or hurled by the handful by a Tracker Warchief at his opponent, in the heat of an affray.  These traps had been crafted in a range of sizes, though none would’ve been up to holding anything on the scale of a wild Caragor – or even an escaping human slave, let alone one from the Orcish barracks.  They had obviously been designed to target much smaller, four-footed prey. </p><p>The nets and catching equipment, not to mention the stack of salt-dried coney skins that Ratbag uncovered, bales of pelts perfectly preserved by the dry mountain air; this place must have been a kind of hub for animal trapping or processing at some point in the not too distant past.  Most likely it had been abandoned around the time the Gondorians of Minas Ithil turned their thoughts to fortifying their city-stronghold.  A small, isolated outpost like this would have scarcely been worth the effort of defending.</p><p>An Orc and a runaway Nazgûl would be able to keep a low-enough profile if they bided their time quietly, in a place like this.  Better yet, there were a good few hours of daylight left.   Rolling his sleeves up – figuratively speaking – Ratbag got started on settling them in.</p><p> </p><p>TBC</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. A misunderstanding and an unmasking</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>Night came early in the Mountains of Shadow, with the sun sinking down behind the ridge of high fractured peaks away in the west. </p>
<p>Attended, to greater or lesser extent by his Nazgûl companion, Ratbag had spent the rest of the afternoon getting a feel for the lie of the land, and exploring their immediate surroundings.</p>
<p>He soon discovered the reason for the lodge’s placement, as well as the flourishing grove of trees that had grown up around it: a cold, clear-running spring that came bubbling out of a fissure in the rocky hillside, just beyond the shade of the pines.  Rain still fell in the mountains even on the borders of Mordor, and at this time of year the spring, fed by the winter storms that came chasing up from the floodplain of the Anduin, was in fine free-running spate.  Later on in the year it might even stop flowing entirely and to guard against such a prospect a stepped series of deep, bowl-shaped cisterns had been set into the hillside, each carefully positioned beneath the other to collect and store the overflow. </p>
<p>A small amount of run-off moving down through the basins kept the water aerated and reasonably fresh.  The overspill from the lowest of them was quickly absorbed by the distinctive, purple-red coloured substrate of the region.  That, at least, explained the healthy grown of the trees.  </p>
<p>Ratbag drank his fill from the spring and filled his grog-flask and water-skin.  By the time he and the Nazgûl returned to the hunting lodge the sun was down and the temperature was dropping.  They’d taken the time to collect a fine stack of kindling and fallen branches earlier in the day, and he set about building a roaring fire in the upper room.</p>
<p>It was only just enough to keep the chill of the night away.   They had climbed far enough into the mountains to be above the perpetual fug and smog of Mordor, and were at a enough of a height to be looking down on the dense, encroaching cloud-bank to the east that lay like a blanket over the lowlands of Gorgoroth plain. </p>
<p>Up here on the plateau the cold light of the stars burned high and clear at altitude, and in spite of the heat of the day the night air held in it a wintry breath of frost.   </p>
<p>Ratbag was stretched out full-length, warming himself on the hearth-stones in front of the fire.  He must’ve slept for a time, for when he next roused himself the blaze had burned down to a loose heap of embers. They glowed alternately red and white-hot, blown by the chilly currents of air that draughted in through the open windows and under the eaves of the roof. </p>
<p>The Nazgûl had taken a place at an angle to the fire, off to one side.  He sat with his back held straight  and his hands resting loosely on his thighs in an alert, yet resting pose.  As ever he was silent, still, and as he had been all day, completely compliant.  For a moment the Orc watched his companion with a sidelong look.  The way things were it was difficult to tell what – if anything – was passing through the Wraith’s head but for the moment he did appear to be calm enough.   Now or never!  This seemed as good a time as any to try.</p>
<p>Ratbag padded towards him and cleared his throat.  “You know Ranger,” he began, “Ratbag’s never been one of those night-eye sorts.  What he can see in the dark – and between the two of us it’s not much – well it’s always been pretty duff, really.”  He gave a self-deprecating huff as he reached for the Nazgûl’s mask.  “If you were to take this awful, shrakhin’ thing off, odds are you’d do much better than me.”</p>
<p>The Wraith’s response came with the speed of instinct, as if Ratbag had hit a trigger, or a switch.  Before his fingers came close to brushing the ugly covering of armour-plate the Orc found himself dragged onto his feet, spun round and mashed face-forwards against the nearest wall.  And the Nazgûl was at his back, in his space, all over him – just as it had been in the crypt.  One of its hands grasped for his neck, not gently.  Then it was clasping and twisting his head round, holding him there; forcing him not to look.  The realization swept through him, in the circumstances a most unwelcome shock. For a moment Ratbag was certain he knew what it wanted: another anonymous fuck, and the thought of having it take him like that – <em>again!</em> - made him gasp for breath.   Suddenly there wasn’t nearly enough air. </p>
<p>The Nazgûl loomed over him.  The breadth and strength of its body.  Its closeness.  The brutal, untempered source it drew on, even as that same source kept it bound inescapably in thrall; to a coward and a worm like Ratbag it should’ve been beyond intimidating.  It <em>was</em> frightening, yet Ratbag couldn’t deny that there was also a part of him that also found it thrilling because this was the real thing, undiluted and with not a trace of the usual Warchief’s empty threats and posturing.  This was a taste of the force and might he’d always known that Talion was capable of, and for the first time it was being directed Ratbag’s way. </p>
<p>Before Talion, Ratbag couldn’t deny that he’d always been drawn to – well, to obvious displays of strength.  More particularly he’d been attracted to those who wielded it.  An Orc of Ratbag’s calibre could scarcely avoid such inclinations, which weren’t just second nature: they’d been bred into the meat, the marrow and the bones of him. </p>
<p>The Warchiefs – and others - to whom he’d abased himself, so many he’d lost count.  Anyone with power, influence - even a fingerful of it; how he’d bowed and scraped to them, jumping to follow their orders, obeying like a well-trained hound.  It wasn’t for an Uruk of Ratbag’s status to baulk or hesitate.  Anything less than complete compliance would be met with swift and brutal punishment.  It was a lesson that had taken Ratbag time to understand, but eventually he’d been taught to take pleasure in that, too.</p>
<p>No wonder it had gotten so mixed-up in his head.  It was on account of all those – those <em>rubbish</em> past experiences, see?  </p>
<p>And then, one rainy night, Talion had walked into Ratbag’s life and he’d been nothing like the Orc had ever seen.  He’d started off by <em>saving</em> Ratbag if you please, saving him from the savage beating, or the righteous arse-plowing that otherwise would have been coming to him. The Gravewalker had cut him down from the whipping-post that night based on little more than a promise, albeit one Ratbag had made with the Ranger’s sword pressed to his throat – and that was just as well, for Ratbag wouldn’t have known what to do with anything much different from that at first.  Yes, he’d been threatened by the Ranger, threatened but not coerced.  It was a subtle distinction but Ratbag knew the difference.  The Ranger’s threats had no teeth to them. </p>
<p>In the beginning Talion had been short with him and surly, quick to anger and often morose.   But set against that were those other interludes by firelight, when after an evening of talking and eating together the Ranger’s arm might come to rest on Ratbag’s shoulder.  The way he’d showed Ratbag how to make fish-hooks, and snares, and taught him herb-lore.  In those quiet moments Ratbag had seen straight through him, to the Man Talion had been before.</p>
<p>Whatever kind of creature Talion had become he was still the Ranger Ratbag had yearned for.  And now, on top of that the curse of the Ring he bore had made – had forged him into something partly other: a wellspring of barely trammelled strength, a wild, perfect amalgam of Man and might.  Ratbag’s responses were all wrong.  The Orc <em>knew</em> that, but proximity to the Wraith – being near to Talion – was having a predictable effect.  He was afraid as he was aroused to find himself so utterly at the Nazgûl’s mercy.</p>
<p>It was too much.  “Not like this.  Wait. <em>Wait</em>,” Ratbag muttered, but his throat had constricted with a fierce paroxysm of fear – tinged with desire and with longing - and his tongue felt too thick and clumsy for his mouth.  He couldn’t speak; there was nothing for it.  He’d have to show the Nazgûl that he was willing, instead. </p>
<p>Down went his leggings.  With shaking hands Ratbag shoved them past his hips, exposing the skinny pale flesh of his arse.  He was ugly and scarred there, as he was all over.  Ratbag cast a fervent hope that the Wraith was prepared to make allowances.  He reckoned it might; after all it had shown little compunction those other times when it was shafting him before.  He folded his arms onto the stone wall in front of him and a thin whine escaped from his throat as he rested his forehead against them.  That would help to cushion things - a bit - but the stones were cold and rough, and he’d not had a chance to prepare himself.  He was aware that he was likely to be in for a tough time of it.  Nevertheless he widened his stance, shuffling his feet further apart.  By now Ratbag knew his place and what was expected from an Orc in his position.  Obediently he presented his backside, angling his hips in the Nazgûl’s direction.</p>
<p>He’d made his offer clear enough he thought, but to Ratbag’s surprise the Wraith didn’t take him up on it. </p>
<p>Instead Ratbag felt one of the creature’s hands clapping him stiffly on the shoulder.  With the other it made a clumsy attempt to set his breeches to rights.   It turned him round and led him back to their place by the fire.</p>
<p>They sat down together.  After a moment Ratbag felt the press of the Nazgûl’s plate-covered knee, tentative at first and surprisingly gentle, against his own.  Then his lower leg, and his foot as the Wraith shifted closer.    </p>
<p>He’d done that sometimes, in the old days too.  It was because Talion had been in the habit of conceding to Celebrimbor’s wishes, showing him a deferential attitude that for some reason the Elf-Lord seemed to consider his due.   </p>
<p>Celebrimbor in turn had kept Talion on a very short leash.  He’d looked at Ratbag with every bit of the natural antipathy that existed between Elf and Orc and it was a viewpoint that Ratbag whole-heartedly reciprocated, even as the Elf seized every opportunity to make his feelings known.  Whether Celebrimbor was berating Talion over Ratbag outright, or lapsing into cold and stony silence, he was at pains to discourage any kind of friendly interactions between them.</p>
<p>Talion tended to let the Elf make his point, on nights when he was too tired, or worn out, or otherwise not of a mind to want to argue over the moral weakness he was showing by, as Celebrimbor put it, ‘being so overly willing to fraternize with an <em>agent of the enemy!</em>’ </p>
<p>Then, if he and Ratbag had been speaking, the Ranger’s words would trail off into silence, or otherwise with a regretful look he’d withdraw his arm from the Orc’s shoulder, from where it had comfortably been slung.  Times like those – that’s when he’d do it.  In silent apology Talion would press his leg against Ratbag’s leg and then they’d sit like that, sharing a small measure of consolation. </p>
<p>Celebrimbor never seemed to see them, or if he did he didn’t mention it.  Perhaps he considered this kind of thing beneath his notice.</p>
<p>Thinking back, most probably it had to have been a blind spot, the way it’d never occurred to Ratbag to hold Talion accountable for being so unwilling to stand up to the Wraith.  Then again, look at what had happened the one and only time the poor sod <em>did</em> stand his ground and defy him: Celebrimbor hadn’t hesitated.  He’d severed their partnership on the spot, in the process leaving Talion high and dry - bleeding out, without a pang of conscience or regret to trouble him.  Ratbag and the Ranger both had their blind spots, but the Orc didn’t believe for a moment it was fear of Celebrimbor that had held his friend in check.  No, quite the contrary.</p>
<p>Shrakh alone, then, knew that Ratbag didn’t blame Talion for any of it.  He hadn’t at the time and he still didn’t, really.  And so, to let the Nazgûl know there were no hard feelings Ratbag pressed back against his leg, just as he would’ve done when he was with Talion, and there were no words possible between them, before. </p>
<p>The message seemed to get across.  A long pause and then, with a great shoulder-heaving sigh, the Nazgûl hung his head.  The right-hand gauntlet was unbuckled and dropped onto the floor, followed by that strange, blade-adorned face-plate.  His cowl went back.  Then the Nazgûl almost, but not quite managed to bring himself to meet Ratbag’s gaze.  </p>
<p>Underneath the coverings Talion was filthy, his hair and face painted with streaks of rust and muck and flakes of Orc-blood, and with all manner of unknown substances else.  He didn’t speak - seemed either on the verge of it, or was otherwise held back: Ratbag could see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he worked his throat.  He kept his eyes carefully downcast but it was impossible not to notice.  In the gloom of the darkened lodge they glowed with a feral light – an unnerving light, unclean, unnatural and profane -</p>
<p>Sod all that nonsense!   Ratbag blinked hard to clear the moisture from his eyes, all the while studying the familiar lines of his companion’s face.   The Ranger was here and – for the most part, he was still Talion.  </p>
<p>The Orc was <em>ridiculously</em> happy to see him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TBC</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Nazgûl unmasked</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>Ring-Wraiths. </p><p>The Black Riders.  An implacable force.  Relentless, consumed by unwavering purpose the Nazgûl were driven ever onwards, bound to their dark master.  Eternally compelled to do his bidding, they required neither rest not respite.</p><p>The Nazgûl in the hunting lodge might’ve travelled some of the way down the path that led to full Wraith-hood, but he wasn’t wholly one of the Nine as yet.  The actions of the Uruk Warchief who’d captured him, and later Ratbag proved to be more than effective diversions; between them they’d interrupted his journey, delaying his descent. </p><p>So, he hadn’t been sleeping exactly, when the scrawny Orc accosted him by the fire, but he had been in a relaxed state, about as close to sleeping as he could get.  In the moment Talion had reacted accordingly, with muscle-memory driving him up and to his feet.  It had been a long time since any other person had reached their hand out to him without harm being intended, or done.</p><p>He’d realized his mistake at once, of course.  Ratbag had already come to occupy a significant place in the Nazgûl’s attention, albeit for rather different reasons than he had done before.</p><p>**</p><p>He’d been beside himself when he’d been unable to wake his scrawny Orcish companion in the crypt. </p><p>Unbeknownst to Talion, the effects of the Morgul fly-venom he and Ratbag had shared through their close contact had gradually been building.  Lack of food, water and sleep had also taken their toll: it had been so long since the Nazgûl had needed any of those things that it had been difficult for him to keep track.</p><p>The crisis-point came quickly, and without warning; Ratbag slipped unconscious into a fever-sleep perhaps two, or three days in. </p><p>Talion had done what he could to help.   There were Orcish healers in the dead city, but the medics of Mordor tended more towards being sawbones-types – bone-knitters and surgeons, much better suited to the sewing and stapling shut of wounds than dealing with Ratbag’s type of malady. </p><p>Added to that was the question of whether, following the long weeks of his captivity, these Orcs were still allegiant to Talion and remained under his control.   How long <em>had</em> it been?   He knew he’d been surrounded, taken prisoner in the winter.  The memory of his own black blood streaming from a dozen pike-cuts; an awful stain spreading, soaking into the snow.  How it had pooled below him in the trap into which he’d fallen, and run with strange, glowing lines into the form of a symbol that had reinforced his entrapment.  They’d nearly bled him out to bring him down.  </p><p>Afterwards came…a haze of jumbled memory.  The rage and impotence of his captivity.  Ratbag, freeing him from bondage.  Their flight to the vault – and what came after.  How he’d found his companion burning with strange, consuming heat; Talion had taken him to the river.  Being abroad in daylight in his weakened state had cost him.  Some quality of the clear-flowing water also repelled him; despite his best efforts, he’d not been able to sustain contact with it for long. </p><p>Even the simple act of lighting a fire was now beyond him.  He’d found himself shying from the prospect of burning flames, and heat.  Having been absolutely unable to hold his hands steady enough for long enough to strike a useful spark, he’d had to resort to using Urfael together with his Wraith magic to start the blaze instead.  The Ranger was shaken by that, by the fact that he’d had to make use of magical props and enchantments, all in the course of completing a task that once would have been as easy and as natural for him as breathing.    </p><p>It had been an especially cruel torment for Talion to realize how the fragile threads that had once moored him to his human existence were being severed, one by one.</p><p>Then there was the matter of Ratbag’s reaction to the Wraith.   He’d been disgusted by Talion’s condition and had shown it, expressing a deep, natural revulsion for the Ranger’s altered form.  That had hit home harshly; perhaps even more so coming from the quarter that it did. </p><p>All in all then, it hadn’t been a difficult decision.  In the face of that series of wretched revelations there was little left for Talion to hold onto and his options - such as he had options - were clear.  He could choose a clean death out on the riverbank, assuming his companion could find it in him to be merciful.  Otherwise he could take a last step out over the precipice, and relinquish what remained of his self and his will to become the Dark Lord’s thrall.  It was a set of choices that turned out to be no kind of choice at all and so, once Ratbag revived there was nothing else for it.  The Nazgûl quietly ceded his fate to him.  He surrendered to the Orc, supplicating himself on bended knee just as Isildur had following his defeat by Celebrimbor and Talion.</p><p>Whatever Talion’s actions had invoked complicated his situation.  Isildur’s ring bound him to the Dark Lord, that fact was undeniable.  But was the link between them unbreakable?  Perhaps the Ranger, having come to the brink, was at a point where he was able to test the strength of his chain.  The flying Ringwraith that circled them from the air that night; it hadn’t found them through coincidence.  It had been dispatched from the Dark Lord’s fortress, set out on the hunt for him.  Why had it been sent there, if not in answer to a challenge given? </p><p>And yet, even if neither Wraith nor Orc appreciated the significance of what had passed between them, in pledging himself to Ratbag Talion had made a new vow, and forged a new bond all of his own.  What that meant as far as his fate was concerned remained to be seen.  Talion, time and again however, had proven himself to be a Man who would not break his faith easily.</p><p>Ratbag’s influence in the short-term was more obvious.  He’d been quick to change his mind about  - or more likely, had decided for reasons of his own to overlook - the more obvious signs of the Nazgûl’s physical and spiritual corruption.  Talion’s understanding was that for a time at least, they would once again be travelling companions and he was quick to make the most of the opportunity.  No matter what Ratbag did, or said, or where he went: he took to sticking by the Orc’s side assiduously.</p><p>After being alone for so long – save for the malign influences of the ring, the Nazgûl had forgotten the simple pleasure of another person’s company.  Into his bleak existence the Orc brought life, and warmth, and solace - qualities the Wraith had had gone for so long without as to barely be able to recognize, at first.  It was no wonder he cleaved so closely to him.  Being around him - the fact of the scrawny Orc’s presence, together with his obvious concern for Talion - even Ratbag’s constant prattle had calmed and drawn him.  It had been balm for his worn, embattled soul.</p><p>Of course the Ranger would have liked to be able to see him with his own eyes, rather than through the greyed-out, swirling tones of his Wraith-vision.  That, however, was impossible.  Talion had never been a vain Man; far from it, but at the same time he was all too aware that he bore the look of a Nazgûl now, and that his appearance could only ever inspire fear, disgust and dread.  So he made do with the only sight-sense left to him, trapped as he was behind the mask that had become both his refuge and his prison.   </p><p>He had good reason.  The Nazgûl’s faceplate and helmet stayed on.</p><p>Or at least – that applied right up until the point it didn’t.   They had Ratbag’s native curiosity combined with his – frankly, disturbing - lack of guile to thank for that. </p><p>Talion knew how much he owed the Orc.  Since the Waystation, Ratbag had helped him over and again, and had continued to do so even at the expense of his own well-being.  If his companion wanted to see the kind of creature he was dealing with, then the least Talion could do was to let him look.   As much as it pained him, the Orc deserved to see for himself the ugly, unvarnished truth.</p><p>By this stage Talion’s courage and fortitude were never in doubt.  First with Celebrimbor, and later in spite of him he’d fought in single-minded defence of Gondor’s border, standing firm against armies of Orcs and Uruks, and in the face of all the beasts that Mordor ranged against him, from Caragors and Ghûls, to mighty Graugs.</p><p>Revealing himself to his former comrade was something else altogether.  Having to show Ratbag the extent of his fall, all the while knowing that it risked shattering the tentative peace that had only just been established between them; for that Talion had to call up a different kind of bravery, of a type he hadn’t drawn upon in years.</p><p>So, he was expecting the worst, as he unfastened the various clasps and straps that held his cowl and head-coverings in place.  Talion could barely remember the last time he’d willingly gone without his Nazgûl armour, and the night air felt cold and strange on his face.  He wished he was able to speak to Ratbag, to acknowledge the unexpected kindnesses he’d been showing him, at least, but words were beyond him.  With a shudder the Nazgûl remembered the outcome when he’d last attempted it.  After the pain and violence at the Waystation, his thoughts – for a moment – had been clear.  He’d recognized Ratbag and foolishly tried to tell him so, only to find that human speech, it seemed, was no longer possible for him.  His voice was the voice of a Ringwraith now, and only an awful rasping sound had issued from the ruins of his throat.  How badly it had frightened both of them.</p><p>The Nazgûl hung his head.  Really, what was there for Talion to say?  That Ratbag shouldn’t be afraid of him?  That despite his looks, he’d retained some vestiges of humanity?   The Ranger was aware that neither of those things were true and so he sat stoic, in silence, waiting for the flood of righteous loathing that was surely coming to him.</p><p>But once again, the Orc surprised him.    </p><p>Ratbag studied him for a long moment, with his eyes narrowed and his head titled to one side.   Then he took hold of the Nazgûl’s exposed hand and then – going carefully – he lifted Talion’s arm a bit – and at the same time shuffled his arse closer, a bit, positioning Talion’s arm so that it was draped comfortably across his shoulders when he finally set it down. </p><p>Him and Ratbag.  It took Talion a moment to realize this was just the way they’d used to sit, back in the days when he had been a…less supernatural kind of creature and they’d been resting together by his fire.</p><p>Quite unperturbed, Ratbag closed what little distance remained between them.  He didn’t nestle into the cold black surface of the Nazgûl’s armour exactly, but he did press himself closer; close enough that after a moment Talion could feel the blessed warmth of his body-heat blooming all down his side.</p><p>The Orc fidgeted and fussed but soon settled.   After a moment he pressed his face to Talion’s chest and gave a contented, gusty sigh.</p><p>“S’good to have yer back, Ranger,” he said.</p><p> </p><p>TBC</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>With abundant thanks and very fond appreciation as ever to the wonderful Sinick, who’s been kind enough to offer advice and support, and who has made constructive and extremely useful comments and suggestions which have greatly improved the earlier drafts of the story.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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